Can the need for novelty and change be mitigated by rotation?

I have a dedicated listening room with a lot of excellent room treatment. I have three Symposium equipment racks. And my main choice of loudspeakers are quite "full of character", Devore O/93's. My amp, an ARC 150 SE plays well with the Devores despite having 10x the power the O/93's need-no hiss or hum whatsoever with the volume turned up. But be that as it may, I get a big kick out of subbing a pair of Spendor D7.2's for the Devores. I rotate them every six months or so. The Spendors are great at imaging and detail, and don't have the slight flaw of a murky/woody upper midrange that I sometimes notice in the Devores. The Devores are kings of touch and timbre. The Spendors are vanilla in those two attributes but do just about all else very well. I am about to have a low powered SE zero negative feedback classic and overbuilt amp delivered, an Ampsandsound Nautilus. It has transformers rather than caps to input balanced signal from my true-balanced ARC Ref 6 preamp. I also have from time to time swapped in a McCormack DNA.5 and DNA 1 given the "Full Monty" upgrades by SMC Audio/Steve McCormack. I love being able to swap speakers and amps. 
I have four headphone amps (about to be five) and five sets of upper tier headphones for the same reason. 
Those who have weighed in that rotating equipment is silly and one "optimum" should be striven for confound me. Life is short. Changes are good. Would you want to live in a bubble where the sunrise, sunset, temps, and season remain static 365 days a year? It is bad enough that I am stuck with my wife of 33 years!

I certainly don't like listening to the same piece of music over and over again. I don't eat the same kind of food every day, for do I use the same fork.

I like being able to swap out amps/speakers so that I can change up my enjoyment. SEL-57's don't do "loud/intense/agressive" music so well. Vocal Jazz, acoustic instruments and some electronic music, different story. The Cornwalls as much as they can do acoustic music well, they do the big stuff really well. 

Options are not bad things. I think that if you are in the mood for a particular sonic presentation of music you are wanting to listen to, then why not mix it up.

I so enjoyed the prose displayed in some of these posts. Wonderful lads.
As one that also has had a long journey with many cycles as funds became available I too like variety. Accumulation of ’nice’ components over the last couple of cycles has meant that I have the luxury of many systems and swapping components around. They have different uses though, the living area system whilst i am cooking or working around the house. With a large area the system projects and fills the house with music to work with and also in summer drinking with mates and family as it extends nicely with quad sliding doors onto the alfresco. The master bedroom system is just to lie in bed in the morning and enjoy smooth soothing music. Yes i could upgrade one or 2 of the systems but to what end, they all sound good to me. I do have 2 nice stereo systems in my theatre/sound room and every other week play my 2nd stereo system as I like the change.

I am the same with guitars and amps, I have 5 core guitars and 2 amps set up in the sound room as well and each has a different personality and each is more suited to different styles of music. Yet when i go out for jamm I will take another guitar which can play a wider range of music and is lighter !!! So different personalities for different styles of playing to an extent is reflected in my hifi systems, 2 of my systems are stronger for vocals and jazz, whilst 2 are brilliant for harder driving music, such as rock.

Just the once I agree with Miller.
Novelty and change are massively over-rated.
Too many people are inclined to fiddle for the sake of fiddling.


"When was the last time you moved or adjusted any component in your system or room?"

- Save for two major amplifier upgrades in the last three years, about 20 years ago.  I never fiddle with plugs and wires and don't do passive tweaks.

Those who have weighed in that rotating equipment is silly and one "optimum" should be striven for confound me. Life is short. Changes are good. Would you want to live in a bubble where the sunrise, sunset, temps, and season remain static 365 days a year? It is bad enough that I am stuck with my wife of 33 years!

i understand that you need changes in your sound experience...Because none of your rotated gear satisfy you COMPLETELY, or because if they did, the "sound" must be changed and the change reveal to you the proper balance tones and frequencies of each speaker in your acoustical partially controlled room and reveal to you that none of your speakers satisfy you completely...

But without being "silly" i found an optimum yes in my own system/room....

And because there is no rule in audiophile world about the right or interdiction  to rotate any gear, there exist rules though about the optimum way to embed acoustically any audio system... When this is achieved it is POSSIBLE if the resulting S.Q. is great to strive for the MUSIC varieties and no more for the SOUND in your need of variations ....

I am so glad with my 500 bucks rightfully acoustically embed system after 2 intense years of acoustical listenings experiments that it is me that judge "silly" the rotating idea FOR MYSELF...( my system is not perfect by all means but done acoustically right i am not envious of ANY system i ever listen to even of those which are better and many are better)

But at the end no one is "silly"....

SIMPLY  when a system sound more than good because of acoustic done right changing it appear preposterous to the OWNER...

Inform yourself here and ask to those very  FEW who own very good audio system that are ALSO very well embed mechanically, electrically and especially acoustically, or TOP one in TOP acoustical room...

Propose them a change in their gear...

Listen to their reaction... 😉😎😁😊

 And by the way, in life, being stuck with a marvellous non aging audio system done right for all  life is not the same than being stuck with an aging woman for all life...

And last but not least, i listen music through sound, not sound through music....

And let me say this to you: acoustic controls are so powerful that most people have no clue about this.... Read any audio forum : acoustic is secondary, all words go to some marvellous branded name piece of gear they just bought.... Thats say all....

Any relatively good piece of gear will sound marvellous in an acoustically controlled room and way less so in the opposite case... Simple....Choose first good components at the price you can afford, after that forget electronic and read about acoustic.... Simple....

And your need of variations will come from music not from moving the problem around with the moving gear and the moving of sounds...

😁😁😁😁😁😊😊😊😊






«If you dont want to complain about your aging future wife, pick first an acoustically controlled wife»- Groucho Marx 🤓