When's enough, enough?

I find that many of our customers are looking for a certain minimum level of competency from the system. Once they get there, they are satisfied for a while.

But its a fact that you get used to the amazing detail and speed possible, after a while you want to know what can be done to get more (if you are all-digital, and want more resolution, a simple way is to add analog to the mix...).

So it is a journey. Its important to understand that there is not a destination other than the journey itself, sort of like a good day in the country on a motorbike.

Some people like to trade gear, for me its all about the music. I like to hear a lot of it. But whatever it is that works for you, the bottom line is its supposed to be fun :)

Atmasphere basically said what I was going to say, that the biggest culprit is that you get used to the sound no matter how spectacular and it becomes less amazing due to how familiar you are with it.

The other major culprit to merry-go-rounding is the hifi press and sites like audiogon. The hifi press is constantly telling us that the latest offerings are dramatic improvements over older gear. For the most part this is untrue. There are only so many "break throughs" that can really occur. It's mostly hype. You can easily assemble a 10 year old system that competes with today's brand new offerings.

If you want to get off the merry go round, the first step would be unsubscribe to the hifi press and hifi web sites. It's like breaking a shopping addiction, step 1, stop going to the mall.

Funny thing happened with my last audio changes -

I have always had a lot of curiosity about what is possible and, for the most part, I always knew something was missing. Well a couple of months ago, I found I could afford to seriously think about something to do to really improve my sound.

I've been listening very carefully to a lot of different recordings and music types (as well as sources, amps etc)for the past couple of months and I can't really pin down any aspect of my sound that I can change in my present environment that would give me more pleasure (apart from getting a different room and that ain't going to happen).

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure with a new pre-amp alone (I fantasize about the Audio Space Reference pre-amp, boy does that look neat!) would give me enought to play with for a year or two but I think all I would end up with is a slightly different sound and a lot more curiosity.

It's like lusting over finding a blond, finally getting one, and then wondering if a 'natural' blond might be seriously better and its worth a divorce to find out. Well I suppose you could go out and rent one, but it wouldn't be the same would it. Lucky folks find a 'natural' blond in the first place and realize the differences are all an illusion, I mean who would prefer a bottle blond.

It has really come to the point that I can no longer tell you what I would/could/should change about my systems sound to actually improve it. So I'm spending my money on a coffeee bean roaster - I'm sure I can find perfection there. Un huh! :-)

I agree with Jaxwire about audiophile journalism being deadly for those with compulsions or angst. I gave mine up many years ago, but I'm still here so it is not necessarily the whole solution, :-)

Atmasphere and Jaxwired,
This is a very interesting question. I think some people are more restless than others to improve the sound in their system, and if they have the funds they will tend to indulge themselves. A lot of this depends on personality and how important reaching higher is for each person.

I agree with you, Jaxwired, that most of the hifi press is hype. They are too tied to commercial interests to be believed. The conflict of interest is too obvious. When you stated, "you get used to the sound no matter how spectacular and it becomes less amazing due to how familiar you are with it", this is also true of many facets in life. We get used to new circumstances. But with audio, once you have improved the sound in your system it is hard to go back to the old sound. If you improve the sound with a new wire, for example, and you then take it out of the system, you are likely to put it back very quickly. In life, on the other hand, we usually get used to, or at least grow to accept, a new status quo that may not be as elevated as it was before. Which is not to say that we would not prefer to be back where we were earlier.

Onhwy61,
You stated, "It is not natural to be disatified with your system. That disatifaction is a learned behavior encouraged by magazines and other forms of marketing." Actually, I think it is very natural for some people to be dissatisfied, depending how deficient they feel their system is -- and their personality. I agree with you that various forms of audio marketing will tend to influence many people into making purchases they would not otherwise make. But, in some cases, they may be very happy with the results once they make those purchases.

It all depends on what you are trying to achieve. For those with a little bit of sticktoitiveness there are really no limits. The only limitations are the ones you bring with you. It's an Old Wives Tale that your system, no matter how evolved, is only 5% from the Absolute Sound. Far from it.