Observation: Passion vs Obsession

Soundsmith carts are very interesting. Ortofon had the patent on MI and Peter Ledermann worked on them many years, repairing and improving 

 If my memory serves me right it was Bang & Olfsen that had patents that Mr. Ledermann worked with.

A dictionary definition -- a person who purchases goods and services for personal use.  So whether you're a wise and savvy or rapacious fool, you are still just a consumer.  Putting together a well sorted out audiophile system is a step above assembling IKEA furniture, but it's a step below a professional chef creating a meal.  It takes time and effort, but very little creativity.  It's just not that difficult to determine what sounds good to you.

@larry5729,
"I have noticed how many in this group are obsessive and I think it can destroy what we set out to do and that is destroying our passion. I think we all need to be millionaires or be satisfied with what we have. I am thinking about upgrading my speakers, but do I need to when you are lucky to see two speakers in a room in your neighborhood.
Where do you stop?"


When it comes to obsessiveness, I’ll certainly hold my hand up here.
Hi-Fi is bad enough, but for me it’s even worse when it comes to computer hardware.

With so many potential upgrades it can be bewildering to know just where to go to next.
An i7 chip, i9 or beyond?
Or something from AMD?

Then what about RAM? DDR4? How much?
What about the hard drive - SSD or NVMe?
How big a power supply?
Is a Bronze one enough.

What about graphic and sound cards?
Are they really necessary in 2021?

And probably for me, the worst of all, fan noise and how to eliminate it.

Thankfully I found a great article on eliminating bottlenecks that restored some sense of perspective. The author made it clear that when it comes to hardware, for most folks it’s the hard drive that’s the main bottleneck.

A simple upgrade to a SSD quietened the nagging doubts, at least for a while. An upgrade to a Noctua fan quietened things a fair bit but the upgrade doubts never entirely go away.

I’m sure its the same for many car enthusiasts.

It’s just something in us, something that always wants just that little bit more.
Sometimes I find myself almost hating this tendency in myself, yet virtually powerless to resist it.

It’s definitely something that needs working on.

Life is finite and this is not the road to salvation.

Took me nearly thirty years of obsessive attention to detail in building various systems invariably ending in dissatisfaction to get to passion mode.

For me it was a process of learning what I didn't like as much as what I did like. Only after having gained that knowledge could I finally build a system with proper intent.

Having a great stereo system was a major ambition of mine from very early on. Something similar to career and/or educational ambitions, or any ambition for that matter. With great ambition for highest levels of attainment, obsession is perhaps unavoidable. Once a certain level of attainment reached obsession should dissolve.
Hopefully, with age comes wisdom, passion path wise, continuing on obsessive path unwise. The last third of life should be our passionate years, we should enjoy the things we spent our life building.

Given the wealth of commercially available equipment, I think a lot of folks who spend time and money on this hobby take pride in the system they assemble even if it is simply the choice of a combination of commercially available pieces. I think the OP may be alluding to the endless quest for improvement in the sound reproduction quality of a system which is different than using the system as a medium through which you are enjoying music.

I suppose one could say that the DIY and early hi-fi from raw parts is a little more "active" than merely writing the check and clicking a remote control or whatever, to access and play particular music.

Whether some aspect of creativity is self-destructive (or at least makes for misery) is a much bigger issue than just hi-fi, which, in a sense, is an electronics a/v geek pursuit in many ways, combined (hopefully) with a love of music. Think of all the other fields of human inventiveness that took their toll on those who could not sleep at night in pursuit of answers; I’m not sure how much modern hi-fi reflects real inventiveness- maybe some pieces do, but that’s a different subject.