He spent his life building a $1 million stereo. The real cost was unfathomable.

Pretty sad story all around. Weird system, def not worth the money, time and terrible strife and division he caused in his family and sold for piece meal pennies on the dollar when he died. 

Wow.  I mean..........wow.  What a tale, almost worthy of a Shakespeare byline.

I venture to say that, sadly, he suffered from an obsessive disorder that clearly prevented him from maintaining what most would consider "normal" relationships with his family, perhaps others.  While the emotional methodology behind his pursuit left a family in tatters, and his level of audiophilia could only be considered malignant, I have to believe that when not set to "movie", his system may well have been THE finest personal sound system ever assembled in a home environment, never to be duplicated.  I'd have given an eye tooth to have heard it.  It's final disposition is tragic, IMO.

RIP, brother.  

And why the two grandfather clocks?

Note the mirror placements of other objects in the room (speakers, tables, lamps, dog figurines, floor rugs, etc).  

Anal retentiveness to the Nth degree.

@srs148  that Is the most disturbing  story of all. When a man is not capable  of keeping his word over a few dollars you know what the problem s stem from with his family.  On the other  side nothing worse than making a deal and after the buyer shows up they decide  they are going to pay less. Only one way there yes or no negotiating  is over. If you see something  you don't like you say I didn't  realize,e this say no thank you and leave.  I very much dislike when people cannot stand by what the say.that is not gentleman  like behavior. 

I suggest one can take the article at multiple layers.  The audio achievement...impressive; the family's life...somewhat tragic. 

Things have got to be pretty serious to disown a son.  Perhaps it wasn't solely audio that caused that, but still, that's tremendously sad and I would view as the largest failure in my life it it happened. 

It's also an allegory - plenty of the greatest-of-all-time type famous people have paid similar prices for their success, and there seems to be a two-way interaction between the price and the achievement. 

It is an interesting point - if your hobby was golf, travel, wine, etc., you'd have nothing to sell at the end and so you don't get your money back.  That seems like it would be reasonably true in audio as well, albeit there is some salvageable value there.  

I'd hope my kids would want some of my stuff.  But probably not - they really only need these tiny screens that fit in their pockets.