Causes of long term listening fatigue?

listener fatigue is a function of the money you've spent on your hi-fi...as the monetary investment increases, the anxiety and worry we experience over neutrality, detail, bass slam, etc, etc increases (at least exponentially)
relax and don't buy into the idea that throwing silly amounts of money at your hifi is going to solve fatigue problems. if your financial stake in your hi-fi isn;t the cause of listener fatigue the you either need to admit da Nile isn't just a river in Egypt, take this hobby less seriously, scrap your system and start over again or sell your gear and buy a Tivoli radio.
. it really sucks to suspect the $$$ (read "most or all of your discretionary cash) you just spent on an amp, pre, cdp, etc has not just failed to improve the listening experience but has actually wrecked a system we were able to live with and listen to without "serious" complaint.
i'm not saying we should abandon our quest for the grail as audiophiles, nor am i saying that there is no relationship between gear and unpleasant ear/headaches some of us suffer as time passes during a listening session.
we should all laugh at ourselves once in a while, we are nuts right?
i'm not trying to fan flames here, but if listener fatigue is your biggest problem in life you've got a sweet thing going.

I'm a bit more simple minded than the other respondants.

The only way I ever know if I'll have listening fatigue with a pair of speakers is to buy them and live with them in my system.

If I can read a good book for hours while sitting in front of them, they're keepers!

I'm with Gunbei. If I feel compelled to sit in front of the stereo and read then all is right in my little world. However, if I've changed something and thrown the system out of wack, then the only time I feel compelled to go into the listening room is to vacuum and dust.

Elizabeth, excercising the sarcasm muscles again? LOL

Later,

I had a very mellow sounding system (read uninvolving) and finally decided to upgrade the speakers. I have tried to tame the highs for the past 2 years because these speakers brought a lot of new things to the listening experience. One of these new things turned out to be listener fatigue. Not to question a POPE or anybody of that level, but a speaker can definitely cause fatigue when hitched up to a less than synergistic setup. This hobby is all about synergy and as a DIY'er, I can tell you that changing a tweeter resistor value by as little as 1 ohm can make a system go from just right to bright. Just my 2 cents

Wouldn't it be nice if we had some idea what Karman's electronics, including sources, were? Might also be nice to know what, if anything he has done about set up and taming reflections. Ditto room size. With that info we might be able to give his some useful advise. At this juncture his listening fatigue could be caused by anything in the chain.

Karman, care to enlighten us?