I feel that in the audiophile community (keeping in mind that I only observe from afar), you have two extremes of audiophile. The Rationalist, and the Romanticist.
The Rationalist is rational. I admit that I would sit quite firmly on this side, hence the bias.
They know full well that 44.1 KHz, 16 bit (or 24-bit in extreme circumstances) for playback is enough, since human hearing can only go up to 20 KHz, and 96 dB of dynamic range is plenty for almost all music. They have articles like
24/192 Music Downloads ...and why they make no sense and videos like
Digital Show and Tell bookmarked, ready to be pulled out for any argument.
Tends to prefer digital, but some do prefer analog. Of those who like analog, they know it's technically worse than digital objectively speaking, but have a personal preference for it, and/or cite the different mixing used for analog copies of music. The ability to clearly demarcate between objective measures and personal preference is common.
They tend to do rigorous ABX testing on all their stuff.
Because of their rationality, they tend to be quite good at picking out quality audio equipment (and setting them up properly) without overspending. Honest, transparent and detailed reviews are their thing.
Through theoretical knowledge and ABX testing, they know that FLAC and WAV are identical in decoded output. They may have differing opinions on lossy formats, but they'll all agree on uncompressed and compressed lossless being identical.
Tends to have scientific background or otherwise one that demands rational thinking.
The Romanticist is rather romantic in their view of audio technology.
They tend to be susceptible to marketing guff. Overspending is common for these types.
They tend to describe audio as "warm" or "cold", and think that this is some objective measure, rather than a perceptual and subjective thing. They often have difficulty in clearly laying out what is fact and what is opinion.
They might believe that FLAC and WAV do not produce identical output, despite all evidence to the contrary, and will give increasingly-irrelevant goalpost-shifts to convince themselves of that belief.
They might believe that $1000 cables for digital signals actually do something. They tend to suffer heavily from placebo effect.
They might think that vinyl and cassette are somehow inherently and technically superior to digital.
Tends to have artistic background or otherwise one that demands Romantic/creative thinking.
Of course, everyone is different, and lots of people lean on one edge but still take elements from the other. This isn't gospel. You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who is perfectly on one end. I would (I don't see myself as an audiophile) sit very close to the far Rationalist end, but I'm sure someone's even more of a Rationalist than I am. I don't know the intricacies of resampling algorithms or the CD Audio (de-)emphasis algorithm, for instance.
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