un-becoming an audiophile

Nonsense, you don’t need any psychological or scientific help for your problem, probably philosophical approach would help. Audio itself implies feature of Quality, so you can’t separate that feature while you consuming audio information. Yes, I can agree that some times audio could become too fatigued for perception due to complicated high quality reproduction. If it bothering you too much and often, but you still want to enjoy tracks without picking them apart you can switch to phone listening or lyric reading. 

You analyze yourself very precisely here. Maybe you are stuck in an analytical approach to life and not just to music.  Directly experiencing music means escaping that analytical mind.  Like when we hear a live band and feel like dancing. The music goes directly from our hearing to our feet and avoids the frontal lobe. So get off your couch and move. Hum. Sing along. Remember when you would sing Bohemian Rhapsody at the top of your lungs in the car? Or play air guitar to Van Halen? Do whatever you have to do to feel the music. 

I have found my audio Shangri-La. No more chasing tweaks, going to shows looking for the next best thing. No longer a gear whore and not swapping cables, components chasing “the sound”. 

Now I am focused and content. Hope you all find inner peace and fill the void. Now I just buy music. 

One way to look at this is nothing man made is perfect. And if you think it is, that is in the ear of the beholder!  I personally after growing up as a musician, audio enthusiast know what I think sounds accurate. There are so many aspects to building a great audio system this varies with your ears, your taste, and your budget. In my case. I am gifted enough to build my own speakers. I can change anything at will to Taylor the sound to my liking.  I actually have them so close, I have little, if anything I want to change. I built them with a 101db capable compression tweeter so as my ears in my older age, I can infinitely tweak it, or the midrange. I tried to think of obsolescence avoidance when I designed them. My point is that if you love music, continue that. Being an audiophile in my mind is someone who has the resources to collect music, audio systems worthy of reproduction close to the original recording, and advancement of technology to people less educated in the matter. I am only partially audiophile because I branch off from the normal with DYI, and a limited budget. The aspect I do qualify is my excitement in audio electronics, seeing quality equipment, enthusiastic, and most of all a love for music and its relative accurate reproduction. 

When I started buying decent/better equipment in college I spent a WAY higher percentage of what I had on it and records than I do today. The equipment especially bordered on obsession, constantly swapping equipment. Looking back, much more than I should have.

Now, I think I should spend more, but I just can't justify it. My system sounds fantastic and I am always caught by surprise hearing something new or better. When a small (or big) change improves things a lot, I can appreciate it, it is just harder and harder to do.

I will continue to try to buy records I will listen to in my normal playing rotation (not "collecting" ones I will never listen to) and only buy equipment when something breaks irreperably (thankfully an extremely rare occurrence) or the stylus burns out on the cartridge (retip or get a new one) or I get some "mad money" that I feel compelled to spend on new speakers or an amp. My expectations of the improvement/returns on the investment are diminished, as they should be.

A much bigger change would be moving my system into a new room, which isn't happening.

The people who are into the equipment as a hobby and are still like I was in college are free to do what they want, always trying to improve. But once you see the light, it is a relaxing comfort. I think as you get older, that is how it should be with pretty much everything. It is called wisdom.