The "high end" world is pretty small in relative terms and the wheels have to keep spinning to keep the business going. Hence, the flavor of the month club. I stayed on the sidelines for a few years, blissfully enjoying my Stages and associated equipment, never reading an audio magazine (although I still have piles of old one in the closet -- go figure), rarely even contemplating an upgrade, not asking myself whether new equipment here or there, or a small tweak would get me *this* much closer to the music (holding thumb and forefinger really close together now). These were my best times as an audiofool.
Fast forward to 2000. A spade breaks so I go to my local shop for a quick repair. Something bites me. I start thinking about equipment again. I start hanging around the shops listening to the "hot" new stuff. I start reading the mags again.
Well you know what? When I look at a current issue of an audio mag, not much has changed. A few familiar names are gone. A few new names have arrived. Some well known people have changed horses, so to speak. Aside from some genuinely new technology, the same banter is thrown about. The reviews sound the same.
When I listen in the stores, things don't sound any better than they did before. (I will say that the exception to this is some of the lower and mid priced gear. Improvements in actual components -- i.e. soft diodes and the like -- have made these pieces notably better than their counterparts from the past IMO.) But did I hear anything that I thought was better than the *old* Quads, the classic ARC amps, Threshold for solid state, a Linn or the top-of-the-line Oracle? No way. But business is business and the wheels must continue to spin.
I doubt that I would have had this perspective had I not sat out for nearly a decade. This, however, did not stop me from getting "new" speakers which turned out to be "old" ML CLS's with new panels. And I had to change amps due to the needs of the speakers -- and while I was at it I bought some "new" old IC's that I couldn't afford when they were $1,000 a meter but are dirt cheap now. I then somehow fell into a deal for a pair of subs that are pretty much dedicated to the CLS's -- too good of a deal to pass up, so I had to have them. Now, I need additional speaker cables so I finally buy something that is actually new-new. Oh, had to have some surge protection and lite filtering. Like I said I was bitten.
So after several months of mucking around, and several thousand dollars later, I think I am close to getting back to where I was when this started -- on the sidelines listening to the music and not sweating the equipment side of things.
Frap, you are from Mars. But that's OK, so am I. Thanks for a great post.
