If you started over what would you do differently?


We've all learned a lot through our purchases and experience. If you were to start all over again, what would you have done differently?
lakefrontroad
If I were to start over, I would be able to retire and drive some hot wheels! I have nobody but only my family to blame for. Started at a very young age. Anyway it has been a cool 25+ yrs in high end audio...so not regrets.
I would have been very careful reseaching the system I like the sound of. I started by buying to much garbage from various sources. Worst of all ebay .I honestly think I have bought 3 TTs from them, cheapos of course that broke down quickly or never worked, andsame with preamps.The tube have been mostly OK but it's a hit on miss endeavor
...IF I HAD IT TO DO ALL OVER AGAIN...

...learned the piano instead of the Trumpet.

.... Bet a lot more money on joe Namath's Jets, instead of Johnny U and his Colts

...I'd have either finished college, or stayed in the military longer.

...never ever, listened to the really, really great sounding gear in the first place.

...put everything I had and then some into yahoo when it first went public.

... just bought a good receiver vs. trying to do a high end HT rig in the first place.

...would have left SS alone, and just started with tube gear and all separates.

...would have invested in better wiring right up front regardless.
while in college i didn't have a turntable and therefore no space for a record collection, so i figured i would get more records when i graduated. upon graduation i rushed out to buy a new reel to reel, a thorens TT, and some mid-fi electronics.
but i didn't forsee the disappearance of classical alblums until it was a few years too late, and the huge variety of available music was dwindling quickly. as i began to build a cd collection instead, it became apparant that some of the cd's sounded A LOT better (or one might say alot worse) than others. so i wasted some money upgrading recording quality while regretting that i already knew which vinyl records were considered top grade (these were the "$5 records" when i was in high school), but they were long gone. from wall to wall stacks of them (with no real money to spend) to cut-outs and re-issues to nothing. well, at least we had the opportunity to spend a small fortune on equipment that would make the cd's sound tolerable- lucky us!