Can one ever be "done" in this hobby?

uberwaltz,

Once upon a time, on an icy road, someone drove a bit too fast and crashed three other cars, including mine that I loved and still love. After waiting in icy rain and all that, I got in the car (it was movable but needed lots of, mostly, bodywork) and the song that started playing when I turned it on was...I’m in love with my car.

i am done.  stopped reading the magazine and now just enjoy the music.

I agree that “done” in this hobby means done for now... though I believe my current “now” may last a little longer than in the past.

My motto is: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I upgrade when things fall apart, but rarely. Usually I just fix it. 

The amount of time I have had the following components:

6 months - Semi-anechoic room - this is not something I set out to do. It’s a fringe benefit of putting r26 worth of insulation in the walls of and r72 worth of insulation in the studio/office of my new home, where my audio system is. I covered it with burlap instead of sheet rock. 
1 year - subwoofer system
4 to 30 years - cartridges
25 years - crossovers
34 years - tonearm
34 years - turntable; upgrade 5 years ago (VPI tables are upgradeable)
32 years - CD player 
30 years - preamp; upgraded with new caps 4 years ago
35 to 45 years - amps; upgraded with new caps, converted from pentode to triode 4 years ago by the same guy who built the amps 
41 years - speakers 

I did go through a few cartridges 30 years ago before I settled on the 4 that I have. The new one from 4 years ago was a replacement of a tired cartridge with the same brand but better model.

But as you can see, the foundation of the system has been fairly stable, or “done” for about 35 years.  At 35 years, it feels like a member of the family. 

I am done.

I was done before and just sat and enjoyed the music for about 15 years, with a system that I was happy with. I cancelled my subscriptions of both the main audio mags in 2003 and never missed the never ending monotonous 'lifted one more veil' BS for 'only' $40K invested.  I just sat and listened to my system ad increased my music collection.

When I moved three years ago, I had the opportunity to create a new main system and did so, retaining only my analogue front end from my old main system (many components flowed downhill and are used in one of the other two reasonably serious systems I maintain).  It took me a couple of years to reach a point that I was happy with, and now I am there.  I foresee no further 'upgrades' in my future.

I have observed over many years that attempting to be in the 'bleeding edge' of advance in audio doesn't guarantee you good sound, although it does ensure an empty wallet. There is a lot of quite inferior sound at audio shows generated by gear with stratospheric price tags.

The guy sitting listening to original Quad electrostatics driven by 1950s amplification is certainly missing the bottom octaves of the music, but I'm not so sure that he is missing out on the music itself.