OP Merry go round
You are right about "merry-go-round".
The worst a’phile trap is that a’philes believe with money, effort, and some luck, their systems will sound close to a perfect original sound. I promise it won’t happen. Has anyone in history achieved a close to the perfect reproduction sound? No.
Why not? All recordings sound distorted, bright and dirty because all microphones in the world sound distorted, noisy, and bright. There is no way even a perfect audio system will sound great with bad original recordings.
Though any one who can build a perfect audio system, he could build a perfect sound microphone since speaker and microphone have same technology. Think why all best mics are from 1940’s and 50’s.
So, if you have a musical system and want to upgrade, be prepared to come back to the current system in case a new one doesn’t sound as musical.
Alex/Wavetouch audio