Metralla, thanks and nice summary. The human condition: yes, one must be aware of it, and remember to do things for ourselves, think for ourselves, and resist doing things to be accepted.
It's about the music. Most entered the hobby for that reason. However, most became derailed from that goal when they started reading more and more from the "experts", and it became a different thing. It became about status, envy, prestige, and a chase for anything but the music.
My best advice about equipment: 1. Repeat 50 times everyday, "I know what my ears like to hear more than anyone else".
2. Pick your favorite type of music and search out local concerts, and put as much effort and time into that as you do reading the latest clown who is trying to ape Harry Pearson. You'll appreciate the music more, understand it more, and understand the huge rift that exists between music and this industry. 3. If you go to unamplified concerts (pretty easy to find) resist the temptation to say "my system sounds better". You know that cannot be true. It's like preferring the taste of artificial vanilla to real vanilla, freeze dried coffee to freshly ground very high quality coffee.
