HOW DID YOU END UP WITH YOUR DREAM SYSTEM?

Couldn’t agree more that listening to music should bring you joy.  Nothing better than ending the day listening to music you love.  Having a system you love is living the dream.  As Hans always says, enjoy the music.  Merry Christmas, happy holidays and a happy New Year to all!  

@calvinj I fully agree with you, music is one thing that has consistently brought me joy and has often gotten me through some rough patches in life.  I also feel that I have achieved my "dream" sound within the confines of my modest listening space.  My "dream" system would be some financially unattainable system housed in a dedicated listening room that I will never have. Its ok to dream, but I have finally achieved the sonic contentment I have been chasing all my life. My system may have costed a fraction of yours, but it would still be considered an obscene amount of money to spend on music reproduction to my friends and relatives.  Its a strange and unique club us audiophiles belong to and I'm glad to be a member. 

A life of crime.

Not quite but close. I several times considered selling a kidney for a component (but have not. yet)

@calvinj wrote:

I want to know for those who have arrived got their best system together. What is the story behind how you ended up with your gear

Some 10 years ago I started to resaddle into a different approach with speakers that are high efficiency and at least partially horn-loaded, with the initial intention to use low powered SET amps in conjunction with these. While the combo of all-horn speakers and SET’s offer a sonically alluring and extremely well-sounding solution, I slowly veered into a different direction with dedicated horn-based subs, large format pro segment horns, direct radiating mid bass section, SS amplification (eventually class A/B) and outboard active configuration.

Macro parameters were then sought with proper height of acoustic center, smooth power response at the crossover between midbass and horn section above (i.e.: sameness in directivity pattern here, which requires of the mids/tweeter horn to be large to control directivity that low), relatively unrestricted LF extension down to 20-25Hz, virtually unlimited macro dynamic envelope for effortless reproduction at every desired SPL, optimizing the amp to driver interface with active configuration, and finally taking advantage of a high quality digital crossover/DSP for use with horns and the requirements here for delay settings, steep filter slopes (to keep the horn sections within their safe and sonically best operating range), filter notches, PEQ’s, etc.

From this physically and acoustically appropriate framework, which is a requirement for me in whatever form or shape a specific setup would take (but which is still somewhat dictated due to these requirements), there’s a fairly meticulous tweaking process that’s ongoing. There are no severe bottlenecks in my setup as is; a some 10-12 old ref. model DAC/preamp that’s still excellent sounding compared to new iterations, a high quality DSP, great studio amps and cabling (mainly Mundorf silver/gold), and high quality pro drivers. Dedicated, some 50 year old JBL Alnico tweeters will be implemented over the next month or two.

.. and will you be happy for a long time with it.

Most surely, already have been for some years now, and it will only be better in the following years with further tweaking and smaller modifications here and there. Whatever changes may come down the road will be in keeping with the overall philosophy as outlined above.

@phusis  quite the story. Learn all you can. Get the most out of whatever gear you can get your hands on. Use what you have learned through the fullest and enjoy.