High Performance Audio - The End?

Steve has always been the voice or reason, and for that, he's suffered the wrath of a lot of purists and measurement freaks. In the end, it's all about how enjoyable your system sounds.

How can anyone enjoy this hobby when they're fretting about the latest and greatest thing to round the corner?

Just like the horsepower wars with cars, there's now a numbers game with how high rez can you go, with more always being better. All the hoopla with MQA and it turns out to be an anti-piracy scheme. Diamond coated tweeters and bullet proof drivers when there are paper based drivers that can make them blush. 

People near to stop and hear the roses.

All the best,
Nonoise 

Some people actually think the hobby is putting together and tinkering with the components.  Which for them is okay, I guess.

there can be no denying that the vast quantity of popular music that we listen to is not particularly well recorded.

That’s been the case for as long as I’ve been alive. People who only listen to pop music mostly just listen for fun and don’t really care about sound quality that much, so the stuff is mixed to sound good on a Boombox, crappy earbuds, or stock car radio. That was as true in the 70s as it is today and so I fail to see the point. There will always be a population that cares about making and listening to good and well-recorded music, and thus there will always be equipment made to play it back as faithfully and/or artfully as possible. To think otherwise is to me just an exercise in rhetoric.

On the flip side, turntables are starting to become “cool” again, and bars where people can just sit and listen to well-recorded music on good systems were starting to catch on before the damn virus hit — the theory being that people are so inundated with being plugged in and always “on” that they’re starting to embrace ways to disconnect, slow down, and just be in their own heads for a moment. If that continues and more people get to experience what a decent system can actually do and for not all that much money, who knows? Maybe in a counterculture kinda way higher-end audio could experience a bit of a revival.

A lot of truth to that. A big bunch of my favorite music sounds best as mp3's in the Honda. But some tracks from the same recording sound fabulous on the big rig. A good session sounds good on anything.

I gave up years ago trying to ever improve.  It got to the point where I was listening to equipment and not the music.  I could tell you the pieces and parts of a song but not the melody.  It was totally less than satisfying.  I sold all my stuff and went much simpler.  I probably dropped back to 80%, but the enjoyment factor shot to 100+!  I just turn my kit on and listen, it’s really made a big difference for me.