Happy Scale

Could it be happiness is too often associated with a specific age or place?
Days of wine and roses. Music well done or blasted from a 73 Pinto, it is still music. Better by degrees but it is the appreciation that matters. I watched a nine year old experience my modest garage system this weekend while playing "her" music from Tidal. Watching her face light up was true happiness. And if tweaks rule your world maybe the tweaking is what brings you happiness.

OP... I understand the sentiment completely.  It's all about the timing!  For instance, when I was a junior in college (mountain lake country) I sold my car and purchases a ski boat and a sucky old truck to tow it with.  My parents were, well livid.  My future wife and my friends had so much fun with that boat for two years.  Every minute not in class was on the lake.  There were weeks that the boat was handed off between multiple friends and was not even taken out of the water.  We put about 10years use on that boat in 2 years and every minute was a 10 on the happy scale.  

After graduating I purchased a much nicer boat but never really had the kind of fun we had in college.  And the boat did not mean to me what it did in college.  Yes, it's all about the right thing at the right time in ones life.

Sharing the experience is the one thing missing. Yeah, she hears it through the floor but it’s not the same as that time we partied and sang our hearts out to Happy Christmas War Is Over from the Magnavox EL84s, holding hands. Teenagers in love. Or on the street corner sitting at 1am, post-drunk singing Space Oddity. Over and over, with dogs barking and curtains drawn. And her blue eyes glinted in love and light. I’ve never seen her since. Now we’re tired but the stereo sounds a hell of a lot better now.

My first system was from 1969.  Pioneer SX424 @ 12 watts, pair of small 2 way Pioneer speakers and a Dual 1019 record player.  The SX424 survived the longest until I heard ESS Heil AMT4s.  Next big impact was a pair of Magnepan MGCIIIc's.  All the other equipment purchased over the years was upgrades.  The last wow moment was a Digital Amp Co 4800a.  It has made every prior amp seem less in so many ways.

40 years ago my friends thought my system was so cool. SAE amp and pre-amp, Micro Seiki TT , ESS Heil speakers,reel-to-reel. Now when people see my current system (Schiit Vidar amp, OPPO cdp, Maggie LRS speakers) they think it's funny and make comments like" wow, you're still living in the 1980's" and "nobody has this stuff anymore". They can't believe I still have a cdp. Everybody now has movies in the cloud I guess. Or something. And all their music is in their phone.And they all have these crummy computer speakers. Or bluetooth. My brother threw all his CD's out a long time ago.He asked me why anyone would still want CD's. And why anyone would want stereo components. He thinks it's all so stupid. Try to tell them about sound quality and they think you're nuts.
So do my daughters.They stream everything. Audiophiles are a vanishing breed. We're anachronisms in the 21st century. mp3 music thru cheap plastic earbuds is all they need. I even went to Best Buy a couple years ago and asked a young guy who worked there if I could listen to a pair of Martin Logan electrostats. He got his phone out and got ready to play the files in it to demo the speakers via bluetooth. I said "you're kidding,right?" He said that's what everybody does.