For those of you who had spent over hundred thousand dollars for your sound system.

I don’t regret a single cent I’ve spent, even if I’ve made some bad bets. Everything was a learning experience, and I wouldn’t feel as confident about my expertise with gear and room setup if I didn’t experiment and make mistakes along the way.

If anything, I wish I generally knew “more” about everything before investing, but I think that sometime takes the fun out of things because I value discovery and curiosity.

If I did it all over again, knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t skimp on the quality of the gear to get the “best bang for the buck” for when I made those types of decisions. I would rather invest in the best equipment possible without considering discounts, costs and other promotions that may have dissuaded me from making the right decisions. 

@blisshifi blisshifi

I’m glad that you’re able to learn from good and bad purchases - don’t we all do? However, if you don’t mind me asking how many varieties of speakers, amps, pre, source electronics, analogue and digital one can purchase over the years in order to acquire the necessary knowledge and understanding of evaluating good sound? Unless one buys used equipment and hopefuly dos’t loose money in the process.  In addition, how many of the multi millions of electronics produced today will qualified down the road as timeless and legendary 30 or so years later? In my estimate (not scientific) every decade there are about dozen top notch pieces of equipment which become extremely desirable and even increase dramatically in value overtime. So, my question is: what is the chance today that one will walk into the store and buy the right equipment not only for financial sake but learning experience as well.? One cannot learn well from just any purchase or even a few. Moreover, one cannot learn much, unless he/she stays with the system for a long period of time. A/B comparisons, or hi-fi shows and often visits to the store or someones house is very limited experience but not of tremendous value - not much to learn in a such a way.

P.S. I did’t know rich audiophiles are shy to comment or perhaps they don’t have the time (that’s why they are rich on the first place) or perhaps they don’t want to bother with mediocracy, or perhaps they are not many rich audiophiles out there?

If this is the case let’s lower the bar to only $50k and up.

I absolutely could not have gotten better sound for the money. My current system began in 1972 with the purchase of a Marantz integrated amp and slowly step by step progressed to be better and better with better components. I spent thousands of hours of learning and changing requirements as I better understood sound and my values. Over the time I better appreciate finer details and nuances of music reproduction.

I think you could take my system to any of the elite high end stores in the country and it would be among the best. While a high end Wilson system would be more strongly holographic… a Magico system would have better details and slam… and… etc. So, some would prefer others. Mine is tremendously natural, musical, detailed, with a great soundstage width, depth, and imaging. Really listenable and refined.

Anyway, with fifty years of building… I can’t think of how you could more cost effectively build a system.

I spent over $125k on my current system so far, and I am spending more. Because I have never had more enjoyment and heard better sound quality until now. 

@ghdprentice I just looked at your virtual system photos and think that if I ever heard it, it would be the first time I would like Sonus Faber in someone’s setup as I typically do not like them. Knowing the sonic signatures of much of your equipment and the placement, I’m sure it sounds excellent.