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

@larryi +1 Well said!

Mike

@ditusa

Great speakers and yes, the wave guide that trickled down from the JBL M-2 has the most stable center image imaginable. I own the JBL Studio 2 series which was the first consumer speaker that used that trickle down tech from the M-2. On the desktop the 230 monitors are incredible, the way they lock the center image in is amazing. I now have them setup in the man cave as a 5.1.4 atmos setup. With the matching center channel it just gives you more of that great imaging but yes, they sound fantastic in stereo, agreed.

That could well be right.

I've gotten several preamplifier's and power amplifiers over the years, both tubed and solid state, yet here I am again, using my non remote, non surround Sumo Athena preamplifier in passive mode, including its built in phono stage, more than 30 years after buying it second hand.

And after many turntables and cartridges, I didn't go back to the Sony Biotracer I had near the beginning, but to my pl 518's relative, the old S Tonearmed PL 560 and a Denon DL 103, although I still have a half dozen near vintage and modern cartridges.

Sometimes when it's right for my own tastes, I wish there was a light on the system indicating  I arrived. It would have saved a lot of trades, upgrades I abandoned, and tweaking.

I wonder if this question doesn’t reflect technology in general. I have an iPhone so old I don’t dare upgrade the os because it will stop working. My brother had to get a new Apple TV box because the latest apps wouldn’t work on it. It used to be we had to upgrade software but now they make us rebuy hardware. 
 

So how this relates to audiophiles is maybe on the margins of newer equipment. My not very high end system is antique components and so I haven’t cycled through changing things besides my amps. Those do seem to just stop working. 
 

well, sorry if I’m off topic, but it seems to me there is a lot of this bait and switch happening with sometimes very expensive pieces of equipment we use every day. 

Yeah, I would say this thread has gotten kind of off topic. I know it's easy for it to devolve into a discussion about certain pieces of equipment or whatever, because after all that's part of the fun ... right?

But, I thought the OP's question that he posed when he started the thread was: why is it, that whenever I add a new (whatever) piece of equipment to my system, does it eventually leave me feeling un-engaged by my system ... and why does it leave me with a sense of fatigue after listening for long periods?

I would believe the answer is b/c the system you've put together is leaving you feeling those things.

Isn't that the nature of this discussion?