Is simpler better?

@triv

Einstein said it best, “everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

That reminded me of Colin Chapman’s memorable quote about his Lotus racing cars,

’Simplify, then add lightness.’

@jfd11

Gone are the days of unit and speaker swapping, budget hits and unhappiness. My hearing is at about 70%. Might be a blessing in disguise. Sit back and enjoy the music. Save your money for the finer things like Islay single malts.

It’s one of life’s real pleasures to have some surplus money to put towards other avenues of enjoyment.

It’s also very important to have things to look forward to, no matter how trivial they may seem to others.

I went through a deeply grim period of not being able to find much to look forward to.

Losing loved ones is inevitable but we can choose to mourn the dead or learn to love them and cherish their memories.

Either way, and the difficulty of making that choice cannot be overestimated, not the difficulty of climbing out of that seemingly bottomless pit, but we have to move on, that’s the nature of life.

That’s the deal we were born into.

Then I gradually remembered what it was like to be in my teens and early twenties, when there just wasn’t enough time or money to fill with all the fun that was out there.

Thankfully nowadays I find I’ve got plenty of stuff to listen to (mainly podcasts/audiobooks), stuff to read (Bill Naughton, Jordan/Pamela Rooke), things to watch (tons of stuff on YouTube - check out the Fishing Party and Shakespeare or Bust if you like 70s British dramas).

One of the better things about getting older is that your conversation skills, especially listening skills, tend to improve along with the accumulation of life’s experiences.

However, I’ve yet to try an Islay single malt but I bet it’s a far cry from most of the harsh stuff sold in supermarkets.

Something else to look forward to.

Losing loved ones is inevitable but we can choose to mourn the dead or learn to love them and cherish their memories.

I always took solace in this one:

"Don't weep because they are gone, rejoice because they were here."

Yes, it is never easy, but that is indeed the inevitability of life.

If you are trying for better then dump the integrated and go for separates; mono blocks and a preamplifier. Concerning the DAC & Steaming portion of your set up the same principle applies, go for separates. Yes get ride of equalizers or similar pieces of hardware you place between the main components and go for quality wire and you don't need to spend a fortune on that either. Isolate your components from vibration, treat the room for sound using panels specifically design to absorb or reflect and place them correctly. Do not dump all your money into one component and cheap out on the others, try to keep them approximately equal in quality and work on making sure they all play nicely together, system synergy is very important. Place your speakers ideally not where they are less obtrusive in the room.

My DIY amps are the most complicated machines I’ve ever built - much more so than the DIY turntable and tonearm. Very high parts count. They are unquestionably better than anything else I’ve tried or heard, and that most definitely includes simple amps.

The ’simplest’ amp is just a modular power supply, an op-amp driver, and an output transistor. All the complexity is hidden. The simplest discrete transistor circuits are hopelessly bad.

@wolf_garcia said it well, "Simple can be bettered by "better.""