If you’re anything like me, you’re constantly upgrading your gear and spending several stacks of thousands of dollars…

But what if our picture of endgame doesn’t exist? In other words, we are chasing a certain quality that doesn’t exist?

  • Sunlight72@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I used to have that feeling, with a smaller budget. I went through a round of discarded gear before landing at my happy place.

    Started with garage sale components and one at a time upgraded my speakers, turntable, amplifier and cd player. Then upgraded my turntable stylus and later got 2 good headphones.

    It was fun sometimes, and other times confusing. But over about 5 or 6 years I got everything set up just so and now have about $4000 in a system that an audiophile friend and a sound engineer friend both have complemented with wide eyes and big smiles :)

    I do remember the feeling of anxiousness when auditioning competing sets of speakers or researching turntable styli. Basically what ended that mental loop of me was when I heard a Scott Hamilton live jazz club recording and I could hear different people clapping from different parts of my listening room, and Scott says something from the stage and a shiver went down my neck because I felt where he was in my living room.

    The intrusive thoughts played now and then when I would flip past YouTube reviews of gear, but I asked myself (sometimes out loud), “Do I love what I hear?” Since the answer is yes I just look through my music collection and savor the ‘yes’.

    Best wishes!

      • Sunlight72@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        Happy to share!

        Main Amp - Denon PMA-600ne (Love It!!)

        That is also run to a second cheaper Onkyo TX-8555 amp (this is my second level garage sale special).

        Denon runs two Polk tsi-500 floor standing speakers.

        Onkyo runs two chest level wall mounted Totek Mite speakers on the rear wall to the left and right if my couch. They are tied in quite a bit, and when I use them they are maybe 60% the volume of the front Polks. Somehow on recordings with good stereo separation only certain instruments will hover around these little speakers, but very clearly present.

        Denon 45f turntable with a Nagaoka MP-200 stylus.

        Sony CDP-C725 cd player.

        The cool thing I lucked in to is that when I balance the two-way front speakers on their amp with the two-way rear speakers on my other amp on a lot of stereo recordings from the 60’s & 70’s it yields a very 3-D, very clear separation where say piano is over my right shoulder, drums over my left shoulder, guitar right front, bass mid-left front and vocals mid-right front. It can be a bit startling sometimes and really fun :-)