Hiatus

Thanks. I've gone through the same thing. Unfortunately, several times!

But you are spot on. A good reminder.

it is the first time in my life i had not one but two systems well embedded...

For casual listening without end on speakers or sacred listening  i am on headphone...

Music experience fill the space and the sound defects and upgrading  audio gear choices are no more in my sight choices...

The only difference with me with  my low cost systems compared to obsessed people is synergy between components and good mechanical,electrical and acoustical embeddings...

When sound manifest at his optimal through a system/room it disapear into music experience...

@rvpiano 

Glad you found your way back to the music! 

@ghdprentice

I think Audiophilia attracts certain types of people. Men for one, but with analytical skills, a love of nuance and subtlety, lots of cuiousity, and definitely somewhat obsessed. Depending on where you are on the scale of obsessed will probably determine if you get dragged too far.

There’s nothing quite like getting "dragged too far" as a way of learning when to back away from obsession.

Likewise, if you haven’t heard your system pushed in directions you don’t like, how can you discover what you do like?

I have found that my musical "judgement" is at its most accurate when listening late at night in the dark with just a hint of THC running through my brain and ears, Got my medical card last year. What the THC does is amplify focus and eliminate "monkey mind" or rather replace it with a more delightful monkey mind perhaps. Any stress or seriousness accumulated during the day is subsumed by the high and taken to oblivion for awhile. There is also the cannabis PRAT that lets one see the music more as a totality rather than a complex of independent parts that need monitoring and constant audiophile "assessment." It takes away the uptightness that can gather around our systems as we obsess over minutiae. It gives us the excuse to be a little reckless and forgiving in our hearing without the feeling that someone judgemental is always looking over our shoulder. It makes music more of a "surprise" probably because the THC has slightly retarded our analytical thinking and memory.

That’s why Satchmo could never play his horn right without it.

A toughie, for sure.  
One decides, “I want to improve the way my music sounds.”  
Fair.  
The processes then undertaken to achieve the desired result in this fair endeavor often cause one to be inordinately concerned with minutiae instead of enjoying music (for many, the point of the whole shabang).  

A tough line to top-toe.

For many, the processes themselves are enjoyable.  
Fair.  

In my case, I consider the processes tedious and frustrating, though certainly enjoyable at times when I can hear that my earnest efforts indeed yielded positive results. Just from a scientific standpoint, the processes can be interesting in and of themselves. It’s fascinating to hear how much difference a 1/2” tilt in speaker position makes in the way I experience sound, it’s interesting how seemingly insignificant adjustments to things like damping, use of various organic and synthetic materials etc. etc. can yield perceptible changes in the sound, the mental exercise involved in the use of geometry, physics…it’s not all bad, is what I’m getting at 😉

I’ve backed off the intensity in my focus on the sound, and it’s worked well.  
I have reached a point where I’m more educated than I was before as to what this whole audio thing is, am better at achieving good sound than I was before, but have significantly dropped the troublesome preoccupation with technical minutia.  
This was achieved through a “hiatus” from the high-end merry-go-round, and my appreciation for the high-end now has grown as a result.  
I’m much more relaxed now.