Is it ever enough?

@knotscott,

Ah, the one and only Harvey Rosenberg, or to give him his full title:

Dr. Harvey "Gizmo" Rosenberg  Guildmeister, The Triode Guild  Thermionic Techno-shaman.

Perhaps the most original writer on audio we have yet seen, and the doyen of the audiophile tinkerers worldwide. However in his case the experimenting was never without a clear purpose or aim.

Harvey had strongly held opinions about audio and he stuck to them.

Harvey probably also did more for the cause of the Tannoy Dual Concentrics in the modern era than anyone else.

Who else but Harvey would dare to mod a Tannoy Westminster?


https://www.meta-gizmo.org/index.html

I do in fact have ceramic buddha sitting just in front of system.While I try to remain ever mindful of negative aspects of desire, audiophile fever brings upgrade hallucinations.

It's a journey not a destination

Perfection and excellence are a pursuit and rarely achieved

All excellent systems have a weakest link, it may be a darn good weakest link but it's still the current shortcoming in the overall landscape

Personally speaking, never being done is part of the appeal for me

Not to mention, tis the nature of technology, better and new things are being brought to market faster and with greater frequency than ever

It's incumbent upon us to evolve at a reasonable rate or get left behind

Just don't let the next step impose on getting maximum enjoyment and pleasure with your current set up

Enjoy the journey

@erik_squires ...*s*  Precisely.

Listening to a pair of speakers that I've 'heavily modified' to 'be, or not to be'...and they 'are', is gratifying.

Having such actually sound pleasant, and respond in the manner hoped for is, as noted 'round 'n about, priceless.

I may have invested more time than treasure in the pursuit, but the end result of listening to that which ones' 'tinkering' wrought beats the bejeez out of merely buying ones' way out with the 'next new thing'.  Or the side-step to swap Xd to Xr for the next new nuance.

It finally occurred to self that the response of offered components had outstripped my ability to hear nothing more than 'small differences' in recordings that suffered more from their resident qualities than my equipment had or has.

It may be considered a 'false ceiling', and the stone needs to have more pressure applied to squeeze that last bit from it.  And it could be noted that I'm more or less doing that, anyway.

It's OK to wave a white flag and step away from the fray.
It gives one the chance to retreat, regroup, and return to the field with different 'weapons'....;)

Good variable factors to us all, y'all. 👍

I have been going through this process where I started out thinking in one direction with equipment but then being intrigued by reading others’ experiences in other directions. The equipment I originally bought beginning in early 2020 now doesn’t jive so well with new pieces I would like to sample. As I am a buyer and not a seller, I don’t want to acquire too much equipment that will end up on a storage shelf because they don’t work with my evolving interest.

Example: I started out thinking my music would be digital, with radio as a steady backup for casual listening. I thought of records as old technology, with memories of all the crackles and pops of my youth. I never thought about tubes — weren’t those the things we gladly parted ways with when the miracle of solid state arrived?

So I got a SS amp and preamp, and a tuner, and some tower speakers, and a couple of subs. I had my 30 year old Pioneer CD changer that didn’t sound so bad. I’m set, right? Not exactly. I read here about the bliss of high quality phono music; that the crackles were due to my never knowing how to clean the records right. I’m not sure about this and don’t want to invest a lot of money if it turns out that records are garbage. I buy a $300 turntable and an $80 Spin Clean, and I’m furiously cleaning and playing records. Pretty good, but not sonic nirvana.

Then I read that a “decent” TT probably costs at least $2,000, and the same amount for a decent vacuum record cleaning machine that sucks gunk right out of the grooves! Really? And I read that my old CD changer is junk and that a need to buy a high quality CD . . preferably transport . . . and then I need to buy a dac to play it. So I do — I give my changer to a nephew and buy a CD transport that some people seem to like, and a small dac. I’m set, right? (Except for the crappy TT and record washer)

I keep hearing about the magic of the “tube sound”, and again I’m intrigued. I could spend thousands but decide to buy the $1000 Freya+. So I swap that in place of my SS preamp . . but now I need a phono stage to play my turntable! It just keeps happening like this, changing directions and now more equipment is needed to play with the new additions. And I still don’t have a dedicated streamer, though there is one in my Bluesound Vault 2i, but then that might not be good enough to obtain quality sounds.

And my Martin Logan towers probably are not good enough, but I don’t have room to properly position speakers anyway, and certainly not enough for the planars everyone raves about. Yeah, my listening room is just inadequate and I need to move to another house or build on to this one to have a dedicated listening room with all the necessary room treatments, the dedicated electrical lines and special audio-grade receptacles. But then my cables are crap and I need to spend thousands to upgrade them!

My head hurts. Maybe I was better off before?