Are audiophile products designed to initially impress then fatigue to make you upgrade?

@ghasley 

"reputable companies who build serviceable gear are the ones around for the long haul"

Very good point.  I found it interesting as my career/hobby in "consumer electronics" was winding down, just how many companies did not offer a service strategy whatsoever.  It takes a huge investment to offer a parts inventory, training, service literature, not to mention paying technicians to fix your mistakes.  Much more efficient to ship the customer a "B-stock" (refurbished) unit and credit them a "core charge" for their old one.  When they run out of "B-stock" pieces to fulfill service requrements, then the item become disposable.  

Think about what happens when you upgrade.  First impression is "wow, I can tell a difference".  Second, you listen for hours and hours,  thinking "I should have done this before".  After a few days or a few weeks the novelty of improvement wears off and this new sound is now your standard or reference, if you will.  So we look to upgrading in the future.  And so on.......

I've written about this here and in my blog in the past.  Whenever I read a reviewer saying "these speakers sent me back to my music collection and I was hearing things i have never heard before" I'm always suspicious this is the case.

A ragged frequency response can differentiate a product.  If you attach a high price tag to it they will then claim the difference is worth the $$$.

A lot of it is people thinking some things matter when they don't. The industry encourages this, of course.

As jnovak has noted, I believe bigtwin has hit the nail on the head on this one! It would be great to get a bona fide neuroscientist's take on this. To one degree or another, I believe all serious audio and/or stereophiles are junkies, especially those who are constantly "upgrading" or otherwise tweaking their systems. After a while, we kind of become accustomed to and comfortable with the systems we put together and constantly wonder what would sound better and provide a bigger thrill.

I also believe onhwy61 makes a very valid point here, too. Although I don't have access to data that would validate a statement like "the majority of audiophiles put together a system and run it until it breaks or some major life change intervenes", this certainly rings true for me, personally, and almost all of my audiophile friends. For example, I've only owned 2 turntables in my audiophile life (i.e.  a Phillips 212 Electronic that I purchased in 1972, which was still working until I replaced it around 5 years ago). Additionally, I've only owned 3 amplifiers since 1972, still have all of them and all still work fine, although the Sansui 2000x really needs to be recapped. The only two audiophile level components I've ever owned that failed after many, many years of faithful and flawless service were an old Denon cassette deck and a Sony CD player. Generally speaking, good, solidly built components tend to last and perform well for a long time.