Did your system getting better the more money you spent or more experience you gained?

In a word, adressing someone the question : How cost you system ? or is it a low-fi one or mif-fi one or high end one make way less sense than most people think in audio threads...

The right question is how do we optimize or improved what we already own...😎

Judging other with price tags level classification is childish...

Is your timbre right, dynamics acceptable ? imaging pin point ? Soundstaging immersive ? These questions are meaningful...

We afford what we budget for...For sure...

But the resulting general acoustic result come from the optimization knowledge more than often most misleading upgrading purchase near the level were we already are...We mistakenly conflate often the solution for a problem with an upgrade...Sometimes it is sometimes not so much...And even when it is necessary to upgrade ,without optimization, it is not enough at all ...Then another upgrade will be deceptive replacing optimization process by a new piece of gear dont work well or dont work completely ... ...

Acoustics is not limited to room acoustic ...Speakers is also an acoustical designed object ...How do we improve a low cost one ? How do we optimize a high cost one ?

The goal is optimization process which are necessary for any system at any price anyway , the goal is not the deceptive race to "absolute sound" and if it is your goal, begin to buy your dedicated at least 100,000 bucks room for the 100,000 bucks speakers ... If you are not ready to do so, forget "absolute sound" unlike marketers who are inducing people to throw their money in an illusive race, and think about acoustics, electrical and mechanical embeddings controls instead , homemade or not ...This will serves all with what they already have at any price...

I apologize for my written "word" which = one page almost...😁😊

If you want to understand WHY acoustics( which is not only mere room acoustic) matter more than price tags listen to this :

As you can see with my video above, i do not discard all upgrade as deceptive... Some are not ... BACCH is in this category...

I could buy BACCH and use it with my headphone as they are now, they are HIGH END headphone, and i could call then my system near maximal acoustical satisfaction threshold...

I will do it when i can afford it by the way... 😊

Because of my mechanical crosstalk installation among others embeddings controls i almost had some of the spatial qualities the director of "absolute sound" described in the video above  with the BACCH filters when he described his perception with the Pink Floyd album i own... it is easy to verify...

Then if the proof is in the pudding i already enjoy a minimal satisfaction acoustic othreshold with low cost active speakers i heavily modify for sure...

Then if someone talk to me claiming that nobody can have a relatively good system at low price , he deceive himself and dont know what he spoke about ...

my only costlier  upgrade will be the BACCH filters...

Psychoacoustics rule audio and gear not the reverse...

Price tags matter less than basic knowledge ...

The ultimate goal coincide then with the ultimate pleasure in audio : learning acoustic and listening music...

Not buying, even if buying a new piece of gear is fun when it is necessary....😁

I’ve been at this hobby for 55 years. I built my first amp, a Dyna 70, when I was 14. 
 

I was born on the wrong side of the tracks. So I’m a cheap rat bastard.
 

I believe the system I have built up over the years stands up to 98% of the stuff out there. 
 

see

@asctim wrote:

Experience saves me money. Ultimately I can get better sound if I spend more but I have found there’s an upper limit to my ability to enjoy. Once the sound quality reaches a certain threshold I’m basically there, so no reason to push it further. Mostly what drives me to try new things now is just curiosity. What will it sound like if I do something novel? Even if I limit myself to moderately priced components, experimenting can get expensive quickly. And that’s where experience comes in again. I’ve learned to think more and build less. Think about every reason why I shouldn’t try something, and be as sure as possible there’s not a better way to do it before I actually start ordering stuff and cutting wood. Thinking about assembling a new system can be as much fun as actually doing it! Meanwhile I'm blissfully enjoying my current system, occasionally trying a minor tweak that doesn't require me to buy anything. 

Well put. I very much share your sentiments and approach here. 

I actually shaved off substantial cost buying my current main speakers a few years ago, while at the same time converting from passive to active configuration over the mains (the subs were already actively configured) and later replacing my 3 different brand power amps (mix of class A and class D variants) to similar brand/series ditto (all class A/B). The Xilica DSP I had over the subs to begin with, and with enough channel outputs I just needed an extra power amp to configure to whole frequency range actively. That turned out to be a wise move, if I may be so immodest (that is: there was a clear rationale behind it, but it was an experiment as well, so the outcome was hardly given); substantially better coherency, added resolution, a more uniform sphere of sound, added physicality with a more visceral imprinting, and better height of presentation with a more realistic sound stage overall. 

The thing to learn from the above is how and where to invest your money, and not - as an outset - how much you're spending. Sometimes there's only so much that can be done within a given narrative, design approach and configuration. Implementation is still key, it always is, but at some point you start seeing limited gains with the upgrades and endless tweaking of a certain pathway, and ultimately more money isn't going to solve the main problems inherent here. For these to actually be addressed one needs to look outside an approach previously taken, and this is where new ground and experimentation comes to the fore. That's the very exciting part, and much time with research in design variations and their configuration is invested by me here. 

So, instead of pouring ever more funds into a perhaps stubbornly held approach of thinking audio, change the narrative and vantage point, and in doing so one may well end up saving loads of money while seeing significant improvements across the board. Only then do you can start refining the new approach even further, but only so much to prepare for what lurks around the next corner..