When is your Hifi good enough?

chayro, but if its "good enough", why keep at it?  That would seem to indicate that in fact it is not for whatever reason. 

Newbee, we are similar in that regard I would say.

Yeah, it's good enough when all I can afford to do is to listen.

There are moments during certain favorite albums/songs when my heart/head tells me, "There ain't no better than this." But then the next music starts to play and I start thinking, "This would sound so much better if...." and I start fidgeting.

"But then the next music starts to play and I start thinking, "This would sound so much better if...." and I start fidgeting."

Is it safe to assume its not just the variation of quality from recording to recording that accounts for this?  

I find when I think things are good enough,  I can clearly hear the differences good and bad from recording to recording and I am pretty much getting the most I can out of each.   That can be hard to know for sure.  In general,  when I hear only good things happening in the best recordings overall, I tend to conclude that most limitations or issues I might hear in others are the recordings fault, and there is little one can do to reproduce something that is not there in the first place.

As a technically oriented and analytically minded person, I find myself making such determinations in a manner similar to the manner in which the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said he distinguishes between pornography and Constitutionally protected free speech: "I know it when I see it." Or in this case hear it. Although the results of such determinations tend to change every now and then.

:-)

Best regards,
-- Al