LoFi

My record collection, my pride and joy, was wiped out in a flood in 1985.  By coincidence the flood occurred the night my triplets were born, August 6; also the anniversary of the Hiroshima bomb, so a portentous day.  I couldn’t afford to buy a CD player and LPs were disappearing from shops.  Even after I scraped enough loose change to buy a CDP the CDs were expensive.  The result was that in those pre streaming days most of my music came from my Pioneer collage dorm entry level AVR tuner.

  I am supposed to end this post by saying it’s the best audio that I ever had, that all the fancy gear I’ve since bought has never equaled the joy of that source through my Advent 3 speakers.  Sorry, no effing way.  Once I was able to start buying better stuff there has been no turning back.  Wanting to go back would be like a castaway on a desert island who having been rescued after years insists on ditching fine dining options for a meal of coconuts and raw jelly fish

@mahler123

Your lucky your not distracted or seduced by the sheer physical sound of your system.

Try working in a vacant unheated building with water dripping everywhere from the failed roof and I can assure you that a bluetooth tailgate speaker sounds pretty great :)

My first decent system some 50 years ago was from Radio Shack. I enjoyed it immensely until I heard a Magneplanar/Audio Research system at a stereo shop. I enjoyed that immensely till I heard ... you get the idea. Going back to the basics is not a bad idea. I think now I'm to the point where I can accept just about any system for what it is. Nevertheless, when I have the time to do some focused listening the big system has no substitutes. 

The music just seems to hold together in my mind better without the distraction of the SQ which I have poured so much of my energy, time and money into. 
I’m not ready to give it up though.  It’s too much fun.