Getting off the merry-go-round – AFRAID TO???

Music reproduction is an art form. There is no right or wrong audio just like there is no right or wrong oil painting. You get tired of one artistic presentation and go for a different one. No end to it.

In general, being a music lover is not a hobby, per se, it's something innate (i'm still a music lover when i'm asleep, but i'm not golfing,playing a guitar, or swapping equipment). Spending time listening to music is just that, to me. Listening to music.
Now of course, I also happened to (thanks Dad), get hooked into electronics at an early age. The two happen to co-exist (music lover and electronics geek) for me. The 'hobby' aspect of this, for me, might involve the swapping of components to see if I can hear a difference, and hopefully something that resulted in a better sound. That is not really listening to music though. That is changing hardware configurations to see if my ears can pick up the difference. Absolutely NOT listening to the core of the musical artform. The music is the art, NOT the reproduction, in my book. One can argue that when systems get to a certain level of fidelity this high def representation brings them that much closer to the music. That's cool but for me it's not necessary. I can get into music sometimes more intensely on my way to work than listening to my kilo buck system (also happens to be a function of mood though and number of beers at home of course).
Over the past years I have fallen in the cycle of using certain well recorded music to ENABLE the practice of subtle difference detection, and of course that triggers the urge to by ever more expensive (suppossedly higer resolution) gears by which I could continue the "hobby" aspect of reproduction. For me, I am totally burned out of that and I just want to get back to what it's all about, the music. Always will be. Of course I still love to look at the glossy pics and think about what the designer was thinking, but that's the engineer geek in me, not the music lover. I can hear Blue Sky by the ABB on my iPod, in my car, at work over *crappy* speakers and still have the same feeling. BAH! enough. It's about the music. The gear and the merry go round is the "hobby". I've sold my seperates and picked up a nice integrated, (oopps I upgraded my speakers too) and lately I've been buying more music and reading the MISC posts instead of thinking about equipment upgrades (except that i just bought a new cdp, darn, o well)...the music lover in me has to keep check on the equipment geek...sorry for the long rant!
TGIF

A funny thing happened on the way to getting off the merry-go-round, I decided I really needed to do some upgrading first. Once I'm done with this upgrade that's it though. Well, at least that's what I'm thinking today.

except for abbey road(b&w) i have yet to visit a name facility that uses anything but jbl 4400 or 4600 pro monitors to mix major artist releases. i would not however recommend them for anything but the studio.

Shadorne - wow...I guess I missed your point. Were you being ironic? All those big names...do they listen to the same stuff? If so, what is it? ... not that I'd be able to afford it or frankly feel any compulsion to do so.