Hiatus

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.

How wonderful it is to realize that all the compulsive, addictive work you put in is in the past, and you can now enjoy the fruits of that labor as a music lover.

@tylermunns 

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.

Wow -- this is not an admission I've encountered before!

Glad I'm not the only one. 

The results that can be garnered from the "the troublesome preoccupation with technical minutiae" are undeniably gratifying, but it can be a real pain to get there. 

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).

Myself too i lived through the same angry frustration and i hated it because it impeded my music enjoyment..

And all my upgrade trials were frustrations because it was never perfect at all...

All changed when with time after my retirement i go head on in acoustics reading , because i was lucky enough to have a room for my system and only for that...

Two years of acoustics experiments became so fun and surprising , it was as if i was able to upgrade my system sometimes each day sometimes each week for 2 years... my hobby was acoustics and other embeddings controls method and tweaks ...

I learned the basic and now i am no more interested in audio gear upgrade but only in listening music... I know how to embed an audio system at any price... And because i reach a minimal satisfaction threshold with this knowledge i enjoy music without frustration at all for the first time in my life... I was an audio ignorant , i am no more so ignorant... Now only music matter through my headphones or through my speakers.. I came here for friends and discussing music and  acoustic in a general sense... I am very interested by philosophy of perception through acoustics..