Premature gear defenestrations

Not for me. I always make component upgrades that I have throughly research of the 2x to 3x cost and the change has always been significant and generally exceeded my expectations. You don’t get that profound changes from tweaks this way.

Having said that, I always upgrade my system from one plateau to another, one component at a time until I reach the new level where all components are of similar performance. Then I tweak the interconnects, then power cords, then vibration control. Some of these changes have been profound… but this way I am getting the most out of the components I have. This method, generally prevents the situation from happening.

To share a clip, click "Share" and select the time you wish the video to start. Like this. https://youtu.be/4Evc60MwXL4?t=3527 That is some movie you got there. Why am I not the least surprised this is the sort of thing that would leap to mind instead of audio?

Good sound is largely a very subjective thing and you can make educated choices but often you can’t know for sure what will float your boat or  not until you try it. So mistakes can easily happen. Especially when mixing and matching components.

hide45 I'm a pretty common fella, I had to look up what defenestrations meant.

I saw a guy drop a Kenwood 9600 off a 2 story building and watch it explode when it hit the bolder in the back yard... It blew up for the 4th time.. Driving Infinity Kappa 9.0.  It took a 100 pounds of Krell to drive those things.. 1980 or real close. That Kenwood was a powerful unit for its time.. It would drive anything else for sure.. It wasn't cheap either..

That was pretty funny, though..

I came up with this question because sometimes people make changes to their gear without first realizing its potential. People may not realize that tubes can be changed, or that a number of other factors could either be optimized -- room, electrical, etc.

Some, like @ghdprentice haven't made mistakes -- they do their research and only move cautiously. The question of this post isn't for the non-mistake-makers, really, but I like the description of his process.

@mapman mentions, truly, that good sound is largely very subjective thing and uncertain. The question doesn't presume otherwise; I'm asking what mistake *you* made and then realized it was a mistake for *you.* In other words, the issue of objectivity isn't invoked by the question -- or at least that was not my intent.