@yesiam_a_pirate
The WP writer seems to imply that striving for excellence is a mental illness.
Antisocial personality disorder, sometimes called sociopathy, is a mental health condition in which a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others.
Obviously, Ken did not care about the feelings of others. All the attributes are there of one who has a mental illness. Someone mentioned OCD, and that would be validated by his obsession and compulsiveness, but not his disregard for the feelings of others. That has to be explained and I find it unlikely he was bi-polar (which would explain his lack of empathy and sympathy for others), but the signs of a sociopath is evident. How mental illness manifests itself is tricky, and only recently (last 20 years) has it been tackled within the pharma industry to provide medical solutions for many of the mental illnesses that have inundated our society.
Ken was of age that in his youth there was no treatment for these diseases. Back in those days, we called people who had such diseases "fidgety" or "excitable" and/or any number of adjectives that described being different. None of them were very kind.
Having family members who are dealing with such diseases - most successfully! - I see many of the attributes in Ken that I have personally dealt with. I do not profess to be an expert on the subject, but the lack of empathy hits home and is a crushing emotion when your child does not care about what you ask of them. Certainly, the other way around - having a parent that is disinterested in their own offspring can be devastating.
Ken's room and system has some oddities. He incorporated four of the exact same grandfather clocks into his room plan. His stereo setup had three speakers. His plan for extended bass had two other speakers instead of say, subwoofers. And subwoofers are the easiest DIY assignment. I am just pointing out that what he did was not what most of us here would do with a room like that. Sure, you may include some RCA dogs (nipper and chipper) but IMHO, no one on this forum has ever said, "Nice listening room, have you thought about adding a grandfather clock? Or four?". Hey, grandfather clocks may have nothing to do with mental illness, but four of them have something to do something that no one here can explain.
I find it amusing how we view his system setup and immediately feel that it MUST have sounded heavenly. It is a visceral reaction. Perhaps confirmation bias because, well, a million dollar system HAS to sound good, right? But truth be told, it may not have sounded good. While I did not watch the youtube video in its entirety, what I read and saw of it, there was not one person who claimed it sounded great. Is that important?
