The Emperor Has No Clothes!!

Thanks interesting anecdote confirming my experience...

Here’s a story for you all regarding the room.  I have my listening room which is quite large but has dormers.  I had some corner traps and a few absorption panels on the front wall behind the speakers.  Now my shop is 30x30 with a drywall ceiling finished in textured spackling.  The walls are insulated and covered with perforated Masonite.  That makes the shop hemianechoic (mostly).  When I sold my Thiel speakers a couple of years back I set them up in the shop with a cheap little bluetooth amp so the buyer could audition them before purchase.  The Thiels sounded amazing in the shop.  I got sick to my stomach because they sounded so good.  This was nuts.   My first thought was cancel the sale but the buyer was already on the way.  I was ready to move my stereo to the shop until my wife talked me off the ledge.  So I went to work on my room.  It took me a couple of months, but I got the room to sound much, much better.  Mainly I had to work on the sloped ceilings but also put absorbers- bass traps in the dormers.  The last issue is signal to noise.  The diffusers and absorbers actually helped with that too.  Still, if I had room in the shop…

@tonywinga 

My wife and I love Savannah!  We’ve been collecting art (that sounds so 18th century!) for almost 30 years now, and it started with a getaway to Savannah.  We bought a couple pieces from a self-trained French Algerian with a studio in Savannah.  We still have and love those pieces, and have added many since.  And don’t get me started about the low country food scene there - oh my!  I’ve always characterized Savannah as a more genteel version of New Orleans. 

There was some Formula One champion who said his main secret to racing success was "brake management" by which he meant using them as sparingly as possible in order to extend their functional life, and apparently he was a supreme master at doing this. Somewhere in there is a metaphor for trying to restrain oneself when faced with the "embarrassment of riches" that is the modern candy store of audio components.

must have been Lauda

@bolong 

an interesting metaphor indeed.  I have frequently been accused of not understanding or embracing the digital side of our hobby whenever I point out the server/streamer craziness out there (and don’t get me started on network switches).  But I’ve tried to use knowledge and common sense as a restraint.  The irony is I’ve been streaming since about 2004 - I invested considerable $ in the original Yamaha Musiccast system: the MCX-1000 server/streamer/DAC, as well as 3 client A10 streamers.  I was an audiophile snob, so didn’t want my home computer touching my audio system.  But to