It’s all a matter of degree

I may not be in this camp that much longer as I have increasing hearing loss. So for me, the goal keeps moving for the last 5 years. I listened tonight and shook my head. No magic. I have gone so far as to have a parametric eq on the way. Last ditch effort. It isn't tweaking as I would normally do, but just to stay in the game a bit longer.

 In the past, I have tried all kinds of equipment, music, etc. I will never regret it, that's for sure.

 Photography. Yah, maybe that will be the new inspiration for the future.

After 40 years of building audio systems I have decided to build my music catalogue. My latest tweak is to always play great music that is recorded exceptionally well. Expanding my musical tastes was all it took.

Since I have retired I have ditched the speakers and gone whole into headphones primarily because my dear friend and neighbour next door to me contracted Motor Neurone disease and I wanted to make the time he had left to him as peaceful as I possibly could. After he passed I just didn’t want to go back to the whole speakers thing so I built up my headphone system to a superb sounding one. I have a bespoke audio computer that I built myself and my files from ssd drives and streams from Qobuz and Idagio are either streamed straight through to my PS Audio DAC and into my Luxman headphone amp or I record them onto a hard drive on the computer clean them up and then store them onto a SSD in .dsf form and I play them through my J Play player because both Qobuz and Idagio drop files from their sites without any notice. At least this way I still have the files to play.

My tweaks nowadays centre on RFI and EMF distortion suppression and the ubiquitous Fuse replacements and they all seem to be very successful according to my listening tests. I probably have lots more to keep me going into the future. Watch this space !!

I’ve been on an life long slow upgrade path with my main system. Periods of satisfaction, followed by periods of upgrade. All this is budget driven of course. But during Covid I got into piecing together two other smaller systems build around tubes. So what I have now is three different systems that I continue to work on and enjoy separately.  I guess I’m deeper involved now that I thought I’d ever be. It’s now taking on a life of its own! I’m still enjoying thought. I hope I’ve answered the question. 

I've always had a simple rule - change only one thing at a time and spend plenty of time evaluating the change. Beyond vibration control, I don't go for tweaks*. I've seen too many people destroy both their systems and their musical enjoyment going down that rabbit hole. *I don't mean things like a proper mains installation or quality cables.