Being competitive, and trying to outdo yourself or other people is a trap. Clever advertising and peer pressure fuels it.
It's a fun hobby to play around with different sounds but when it leads to $10,000 per I/C, that's taking it too far IMHO.
You can search for the Holy Grail but most likely won't even recognize it even if it's staring you right in the face. Instead it's in to the next tweak.
True across the board improvements are hard to find. I find components like Sugden, McIntosh, or Tannoy comforting. Same basic design for 30+ years. Just goes to show real improvements don't happen that often and are usually a sum of many smaller improvements.
What really is happening with yearly "improvements" with most audiophile components is merely a new coloration to the sound. Prima Luna is a perfect example. Sound so colored it's new and exciting for a few months. Then the next generation comes along with a different coloration and an "upgrade' is born. Good path for the bored.
I had my fill of intentionally colored audiophile stuff when I bought a Vecteur integrated, which, like Naim, Creek, and other established audiophile brands does "something" to the sound. Long term satisfaction with that? I don't think so.
Then you've got the opposite like Halcro which, while I haven't heard it is my impression, of providing totally stripped sound. Another coloration and what i call the detail trap.
Doesn't take a lot of expertise to hear more detail, it's what most reviewers like to talk about and has little to do with the music (more like sound) IMHO. Carried too far, detail trap will render most songs unlistenable.
There are other, more important aspects of musical reproduction which are more important and will lead to more listening satisfaction across, and this is important, a larger array of music.
It's a fun hobby to play around with different sounds but when it leads to $10,000 per I/C, that's taking it too far IMHO.
You can search for the Holy Grail but most likely won't even recognize it even if it's staring you right in the face. Instead it's in to the next tweak.
True across the board improvements are hard to find. I find components like Sugden, McIntosh, or Tannoy comforting. Same basic design for 30+ years. Just goes to show real improvements don't happen that often and are usually a sum of many smaller improvements.
What really is happening with yearly "improvements" with most audiophile components is merely a new coloration to the sound. Prima Luna is a perfect example. Sound so colored it's new and exciting for a few months. Then the next generation comes along with a different coloration and an "upgrade' is born. Good path for the bored.
I had my fill of intentionally colored audiophile stuff when I bought a Vecteur integrated, which, like Naim, Creek, and other established audiophile brands does "something" to the sound. Long term satisfaction with that? I don't think so.
Then you've got the opposite like Halcro which, while I haven't heard it is my impression, of providing totally stripped sound. Another coloration and what i call the detail trap.
Doesn't take a lot of expertise to hear more detail, it's what most reviewers like to talk about and has little to do with the music (more like sound) IMHO. Carried too far, detail trap will render most songs unlistenable.
There are other, more important aspects of musical reproduction which are more important and will lead to more listening satisfaction across, and this is important, a larger array of music.