Ugrade-itis - is there a cure?


If, by some "dark magic" you woke up one day and your system sounded the best you've ever heard it - AND - better than the best system you had ever listened to in a high priced audio store, would you still want to upgrade your components?

If the answer is yes - are you...
  1. an "Audio shop-o-holic"
  2. or just curious as whether that new component will make a difference 
If you are #2 - if you bought a new component and it made NO improvement - would you stop uprading?

Just curious :-)
williewonka
I like the analogy to photography that someone else made. 

I've been "serious" about that hobby longer than this one and after buying a lot of bodies, lenses, lighting gear, etc. finally reached a point where I feel like I have everything I need and that it's all good enough.  Mind you, I don't shoot with top of the line Canon or Nikon gear where the body alone costs a few thousand dollars.  Most of my photographer friends have "better" more expensive bodies and lenses than I do. 

My goal is to enjoy myself and to create the best images I can with the gear at hand and not put myself in debt.  It's about the experience and making sure I have tools that are good enough to achieve the results I want without spending beyond my means.

I say all that because it gives me hope that I'll get to that point with this hobby.  I'm not there yet, I have been continuously trying out new pieces and building multiple systems and would like that to end at some point.  I don't think I've spent more than around $3,000 on a single piece and buy most of my gear second hand so that I can sell it without losing much if anything if I decide I like something better. 

I've been doing a lot more experimentation lately, moving pieces back and forth from one system to another and trying to find the right synergy between pieces.  I really want to experiment with acoustic treatments, but I'm not super handy and have some space challenges, but I think that's the next direction for me.  

I doubt that I'll ever get to the point where my system is better than anything else I've ever heard, but I'm at a point now where I've only heard a handful of systems that sound better and more importantly, it sounds better to me than I could have previously imagined. 

I hope I can apply the ethos of doing more with "less" (in terms of expenditures) I have with photography to this hobby as well and arrive at a point where the upgrades will be few and far between.

To sum up, I think I'm a little bit of both #1 and #2 in the OP - I buy a lot of stuff, but it's in the pursuit of finding out whether different pieces can have a substantial impact (they can!) and to better understand what I like and what fits in best with my system.
I agree with @geoffkait that one addiction is often dealt with by replacing it with another (the shrinks can weigh in on that one).
The solution I proposed-- chasing records (whatever your medium) at least gives you more to feed the machine and is aimed at what I think is the whole purpose of this hobby- to reproduce music for enjoyment. At least that's how I got off the hamster wheel. (I still change cartridges, replace worn tubes, etc. but I'm not seeking equipment).
Maybe I'm an oddity in this- I will put together a system and once it is 'good' in my estimation, I'm not really in the market. Over the years, I have assembled a number of systems, but it's not like I'm constantly on the search for the latest and greatest. I've kept most of my stuff in these systems a long time.