How good is good enough?


Most of us here cannot afford six figure prices for each component (assuming that will bring the best sound.) So how far do we want to go to improve our systems? There are always bigger fish. When does it stop? It stops when we say it stops, when our gear brings us satisfaction. To constantly strive for better sound is an endless quest, not necessarily based on the quality of our set but on our personality.

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I’ll be done when my wife says so! After bringing home speakers almost as tall as she is, the wife doesn’t want any more.  Especially a pair of Maggie 3.7i’s😁

My goal was from the beginnings to create a system for music...never to use few music albums to test my system ...

I own 10,000 albums...😊

I invested in music and books (i will not reveal how many books😊 ) not in a hundred of thousand dollars system gear...

I discovered that some acoustic controls with basic good gear is enough ..

I listen music all day long and come here to speak with unknown friends...

I spoke too much, but i hope to be useful in a way if not entertaining ...

For me this " how good enough is enough question" related question is interpreted as a money related question by most...

Most dont understand that minimal satisfaction threshold, once synergy between pieces of gear is reached come from acoustics control over the speakers/ears/room ...

Price tag is secondary even if for sure for example the Microzotl pre-amplifier i returned last month because there was no synergy with my AKG K340 is way better and not in the same ball park than the last tube pre-amplifier i bought few weeks ago for 50 bucks but which had synergy with my 100 bucks speakers which is why i bought it for ( my Sansui alpha was better than the very high quality ZOTL for the K340 then nothing will replace it for the K340 ) ...

I would have keep the 2000 bucks amplifier if the grin on my wife face had not speak otherwise for sure... But how wise could it be to keep a 2000 bucks pre-amplifier for some 100 bucks active speakers? ( they are stunning now after my modifications on their design trust me )

Audiophile experience is about synergy and acoustics (not mere room acoustic) not about price tag and not even about top design ...😁

Audio hobby is good if it make you more creative and at the end serve music not sound quality obsession grounded on gear design marketing more than in acoustics ...

I can't say I'm never upgrading anything more, but I've reached a point where spending more money on upgrades is not really going to improve my listening experience. Most people including your friends and family will never care if you spend their inheritance on a really expensive system because you want to sit there and replay the plucks of a string instrument to impress them with the realism of your system. They will not care, most people will not care about slight differences in your system or music. I'd almost say nobody cares, but nobody in my orbit cares about my system or would even want to sit and listen. It's about me, and I sure will not have my life enriched in any way because of some slight difference in sound and we sure don't sit around talking about the spend. Most people on the planet want to enjoy the music as background and do not want to sit and hear you ramble on about swapping tubes, amplifier architecture, etc. Once you realize nobody cares about what you bought, you'll be in a better place. Once you get past the obsession of buying things, you'll feel better. A huge expensive system may be amazing, but it will add nothing to your life, maybe the opposite.

We all know you can get a surprisingly musical sounding system for a few thousand dollars, a really nice set up for $10K, $20K, 30K etc & if chosen correctly, amazing sounding systems for whatever you want to spend w/ not much limit. 
 

Doesn’t it essentially depend on both how much music reproduction means to us in conjunction w/ the number of 0’s in our bank account?

We all drop a couple $’s without thinking about it, maybe $5 or $10 the same but perhaps not so much w/ $50, $100 or $200 but that’s just pocket change for a person w/ many millions  in the bank.