Is your now then?

I see it as the gear is getting better, but my ears can't hold out forever. :-)

Regards

About 1979 I purchased a very highly rated Onkyo tape deck (award winning). It sounded good. I though the tape head could be better optimized so I took it to and audio guy… sounded terrible after that. He screwed it up and couldn’t fix it.

So I went to a truly high end store and told him my problem. He said, “Here, take this home and try it.” It was a 7 year old, first generation Nakamichi cassette deck… wood around the outside, weighed a ton. Absolutely dropped my jaw. The bass was an order of magnitude better, with far greater detail. That piece of junk Onkyo was thin and virtually without bass in comparison (even before I took it in), That is when I learned that truely high end gear is something else, in a different league, and stays there. The highest quality designs and components never show up in mid-fi and lower high fi. True audiophile equipment is in a different class.


Since then I have upgraded piece after piece as i could afford it. Always concentrating on one piece at a time and making sure an upgrade cycle stopped with all components roughly matched. Each decade my system has been far greater than the decade before. The levels of performance now where unachievable when I was younger.

I never trade sideways, only up. Up, only 2x in original cost or more (sometimes I bought used). Each plateau blows away the previous level, so, no nostalgia for me.

@oldhvymec +1
Hearing Andrew Jones’ TAD1 system at 2002 CES stunned me. My current system is satisfying but I just remember how his room floored me.
I still hang out with some high school buddies who have their systems from the 70’s—Marantz receivers, JBL speakers, Thorens or Philips TT’s. They’re happy with that but I remember those systems sounding better back in the day.
I have sense moved up the audio food chain. A modern well thought out system is far more enjoyable to me now.

jpwarren58

Do you think we strive to return to the past and remain in those influential times?

It's impossible to return to the past. What would be the point of even trying?

Technology, the foundation that hifi is built on, has advanced a lot as one would expect  over the last 50 years or so. So that’s that.