Burned out Audiophile - Trying to Find some Zen

There was a post by someone a while back, or perhaps I read it in the archives during a search, about two types of personalities...a "satisfier" and a "maximizer". The satisfier will buy something of good quality and be happy with it while a maximizer will buy something, perceive flaws(real or imagined), and continue the search for something ever better. Since the search never ends, the maximizer is never happy...rather a sad way to spend(literally) a life when you think about it, but to each his/her own.

If you want to get into the zen aspect of things, or at least the buddhist approach of south asia and/or tibet, then you'll find that "desire" is the root of all evil & unhappiness. If you can eliminate desire, or keep it in it's place (a desire in itself...hence the difference between "try" and "do"), then one can be a much happier person. Seeing the audio equipment game for what it is (substitute cars, golf clubs, boats, motorcycles, or any other material-mania for "audio equipment") helps....it's just a churn of consumerism fueled by "desire"(real, imagined, or imposed)...primarily someone else's desire to own your next dollar(actually your labor)...and most dollars after that. Whatever the item being pushed might actually be is just details. If you think of a bunch of enron-type fatcats sitting around a board room table dreaming up ways of flooding the market with some gizmo and then building a plan to build an "aura"(real or most often imagined) around the product to fuel desire...such that, in the end, they make your money, their money, then it tends to toss a little water of the desire end of things. Images of continually shearing a herd of sheep (your the sheep) also helps. Anytime someone takes a 5 dollar piece of wire, puts some lipstick on it, and marks the price up 7000%...that's shearing sheep...bbbaaah.. aaahhh, but that's just me... :-) ..sorry, I'm off on a bit of a tangent here, it's early & the coffee is kicking in...everyone's mileage varies.

No disrespect intended to the producers pouring their hearts & souls into designing & building equipment. My hat is off to them as they do some fine work & they should be paid for it.

:-))

-Sell all of your equipment and hitch-hike across the country looking for new adventures...or simply 'walk the earth' like Cain in 'Kung Fu'.
-Or, buy the new self titled release by the Duhks and 'Mercy Now' by Mary Gauthier, turn off the lights and listen.
Either way you should find peace.

Yes. Buy records.

They all sound different and that's the way they were meant to be.

When you upgrade the hardware and get into $$$$$$$$ territory don't you find it strange that you either have to sit on the edge of your chair with that "now I hear it, now I don't" thing going on in your mind or else you have to lie to yourself about how great a difference in sound any given update makes just to remain part of the audiophile gang and not feel like a sucker?

Buy music!

I have also been an Audiophile for over 35 years and also was co-owner in an audio salon. I burned out once and did not have a system for three years. After that time I slowly began to realize that external pressures as in, Stereophile and Absolute Sound and Audiophile friends with their crash and burn system changes, put me directly on the upgrade treadmill. Don't get me wrong, I was willing to do so and it was ultimately my fault, but it had to change. I slowly rebuilt an Audiophile system that was hand picked by me, through the experience of listening to equipment that satisfied my sense of nirvana. I lived with that system for six years without a change. I recently seriously upgraded and isolated the A/C in the system and speaker and pre-amp and cabling were also upgraded. I am truly satisfied with system before and after the upgrade and continue to listen to music two hours a night. I still read Sterophile and Absolute and still have audiophile friends, however; I think I have matured and keep the external influences in perspective.

A friend of mine recently worked for Harman International. With his employee discount, he put together a honkin' Levinson/Revel system (well over $10K retail). Then he got downsized. So, he sold all the gear and replaced it with a stereo Tivoli table radio and a Walkman (about $300 retail).

He still had surprisingly good-sounding music, and a fat wad of cash with which to pursue a new career in antique clock repair.

*************

Me, I've only just now hit The Wall. I have as much, and as high quality, equipment as my budget can afford and my room can accomodate. Unless I win the lottery and/or move to a bigger house, there's no sane investment I can make in my system. I'm trying really hard to relax and just listen to the music. And there is a Zen to it, the Zen of not trying, which I only seem to acheive at the worst possible moment, like this morning, when I absolutely had to get out of The Chair and go to work...