I completely disagree. What works for the goose does not necessarily work for the gander. Spend as you wish on what you wish. I don't know why people have to make a right or wrong way of doing things.
Do you agree with John Atkinson (and me)?
Point 1: In the recent thread entitled ’How much is too much to spend on a system?’, I contributed this comment: "The hi-fi shouldn’t be worth more than one’s music library." I said that half-jokingly, a wisecrack that I knew might be disagreed with.
Point 2: In the 1990’s I became a regular customer at the Tower Records Classical Music Annex store in Sherman Oaks, California. The store manager knew a LOT about Classical music, but also made no secret of his distain for audiophiles, whom he viewed as caring more about the sound quality of recordings than their musical quality.
Point 3: In the early days of The Absolute Sound magazine, the writers occasionally mocked audiophiles who had a serious high end system, but whose record collections merely consisted of a small number of "demo" discs. Those audiophiles collect records that make their systems sound good, rather than assemble a system that makes their records sound good.
I make the above points as a preamble to the following:
In the past few months I have fallen behind in my reading of the monthly issues of Stereophile that arrive in my mailbox. Yesterday I finally got around to reading the editorial in the January issue, written by John Atkinson (filling in for current editor Jim Austin, who is recuperating from surgery, I believe). The final two paragraphs of the editorial read as follows:
"Back in the day, I did an analysis of Stereophile reviewers’ systems. The common factor was that all the reviewers’ collections of LPs and CDs cost a lot more than their systems. The same is true of me, even in these days of streaming."
"Isn’t that the way it should be for all music-loving audiophiles?"
Well, is it?
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@bdp24 Get him a pair of Yamaha HS8 powered monitors and a Yamaha WXC-50 (streamer+dac+preamp). That should do the trick. (A friend in need is a friend indeed.)
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BDP24 My Qobuz subscription is $17.99 per month (less with an annual subscription), add a really good streamer for $6,000 plus or minus. I do still have several hundred CDs hanging around. The rest of my system is worth 10 times that amount, and I don't miss physical media at all. I do love the romantic idea of albums, but starting from scratch (and with my gear preferences) I'm not going down that road at my age
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You make a good and important point @vthokie83. Having a large album library (on LP and CD) is the result of a lifetime of buying physical "media" (I hate referring to music as media, but it’s now the common nomenclature), starting in the early-60’s. I was one who kept buying LP’s for as long as they were being produced into the early-2000’s, and kept most of them. When a lot of the music I wanted to own was released on CD only (starting in the early-90’s), I finally broke down and bought a CD player (a Philips CD-80). Being a younger music lover now is a completely different situation. Would I start buying LP’s and/or CD’s now if I was young? Who knows?! I’m not one of those people, and they aren’t me. And once again, for those whose source of music in the home is not physical, the question posed in this thread is immaterial. Having a personal music library (okay, a record collection) and being an audiophile have something in common: they are both enthusiast endeavors. LP’s and CD’s are important possessions to those who own them, just as one’s hi-fi is important to an audiophile. It’s an expression of their personality, their passion in life. My interest in people who don’t love music is limited, but I can easily accept a music lover not being an audiophile.
I had one very close friend, the smartest person (by far) I’ve ever known. His main passion in life was music (the other being chess), but being very musically educated could "hear" music by just looking at the musical score (the sheet music). He always had a crap hi-fi, and treated his LP’s with utter disregard. He spent his final years recording J.S. Bach works on his computer. That was the only music he cared about as he approached death. In his younger years in was Dylan, The Beatles, Brian Wilson, The Band, Randy Newman, and then Elvis Costello.
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