2023 HiFi Goals?/2024 HiFi Goals

General Discvssions & Theory/Vnderstanding
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So 2023 was something of a miserable year for me, including the end of a long-term relationship and suddenly moving to a smaller place. And as such, the front-end of my setup is the same as it was in 2022: the same headphones, the same amp, and the same DAC.

The Allnic HPA 3000 GT and the Mystique V3 have served me really well over this period, and to be honest, I’m somewhat reluctant to upgrade them—imagine a universe where I upgrade my amp: then I’ll need nicer power cables, I’ll probably need to buy upgraded tubes, I’ll want a nicer DAC to pair with it, that nicer DAC would want nicer power cables, etc etc and down the line, and I don’t think I can actually afford to move up an entire tier from where I am. (Note: If I upgraded the Mystique V3 to an EVO Pro, I think I /might/ be able to get away with it, but I’d probably still be leaving a decent amount of performance on the table.)

That said, every once in a while, I’ve managed to snipe a good deal here on the forums and make some meaningful upgrades!

Early in the year, I bought a Stellar Power Plant 3 and a Berkeley Alpha USB, and a few months later, I also picked up an FTA Callisto. The Power Plant and Callisto were fairly straightforward upgrades from what I had before, but I’ve been back and forth on the Alpha USB. I preferred it in my chain when I first bought it, then after buying the Callisto, I preferred the Callisto straight into my DAC, and with my most recent upgrade, I think I prefer having the Alpha USB in the chain again, but the jury’s still out.

That most recent upgrade being the Sonore opticalRendu. Last year, my favorite upgrade of 2022 was the ultraRendu, and so again, my favorite upgrade of 2023 is the opticalRendu. These streamers are just so good, and each jump from micro->ultra->optical is a genuinely meaningful upgrade over the previous model.

I also tried to do the IEM and DAP thing this year, purchasing a Lotoo PAW 6000 and a Hyla Sarda, and the timing was apropos with my living situation being in flux shortly after. The experiment was met with mixed success; I like the Lotoo PAW quite a bit, but it turns out that even when I’m in hotel rooms or couchsurfing or whatnot, I still turn to full-size headphones. I ended up doing a lot of my DAP listening with my Diana V2 or my HD600, and I eventually sold the Hyla Sarda later in the year.

I’ve actually been selling a few things since I’ve mostly lost the ability to have a secondary setup. I said goodbye to the Kennerton Gjallarhorn GH50, the Hyla Sarda, and the RNHP, which goes to show that apparently people like audio gear with red accents, lol. I’ll probably be looking to sell the Exogal as well, but at least for now, I’m still keeping the Quicksilver. It’ll be tough to let that one go.

~~~~~~~~

So where does that leave me for 2024?

To be honest, I’ll probably be in a similar place to 2023, where I’m not looking to make any major moves, but just sitting and waiting, and buying something every once in a while when the stars align. Maybe it’ll make sense to buy another TOTL headphone and I’ll buy Polygon’s 1266, or maybe it’ll make sense to get a TOTL DAP and I’ll buy Eskamo’s P6 Pro or something. Or maybe I won’t buy anything.

Even still, I’m having a great time listening to music, hanging out on the forum, and chatting with friends. You all have been awesome. :smiley:

Maybe what’ll actually happen in 2024 is I’ll finally turn that HQPlayer wiki post into a proper article that we can put on the front page to pay it forward and contribute a bit more to keeping the forum alive.

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Was looking back on my goals for 2023 and I acutally did pretty good:

This is in the workings since I’m waiting for the transformer to get shipped.

Done it, and also made a couple of XLRs to go along with it.

Was thinking of transitioning to streaming but have ultimately decided to go with local files only.

Wasn’t able to do this, but as I also said in the original post it’s not really THAT high on the priority list.

Yep, managed to attend it, fantastic experience.
And, I also got the Re/Leaf in March, which wasn’t really on my goals lists but I’m glad it happend since it’s such an amazing amp.

As for 2024, I think it will be my “consolidating year”. Taking it slower and not spending as much money as I did in the 2023 (thanks to the Re/Leaf).
Some possible ideas, ranked by importance:

  1. HD800S Cable, probably will go 4 pin XLR with it using Duelund 26GA.
  2. Experiment with better components in my PSUs
  3. DIY power cables

Those are realistically the most likely option, other things might be: buy a good DDC, or hell, even build an audio server with a good PSU to play music from, moving away from my PC.
Oh and also, I should finish my Re/Leaf article, which I’m not fully satisfied with and might just re-write it from the beginning. We’ll see how it goes.

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I’m getting out of the hobby (for now) since the reason I got into it to begin with was to improve my gaming/home theater experience but I ended up prioritizing music. Not that there’s anything wrong with that but it isn’t my personal priority as most of my listening time is spent with AirPods away from home. System’s a bit overkill for my uses and I’m also moving across the country so I thought it was a good time to part ways. I had planned on settling on KSC75’s and iLoud’s but I still want a proper listening room/home theater eventually. Maybe by the end of the year or early next year (after burning my ears in with the KSC75’s all year) I’ll grab a pair of 306P’s and a Speedwoofer or SB-1000 Pro with some proper treatment and be happy. I definitely want to start buying less and enjoying/interacting more.

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That begs the question: is the hobby the buying and selling, or does it include the listening? Either way, sometimes it helps to take a break from looking at the new, shiny things. I have just done that myself for a couple of months or so :slight_smile:

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The “hobby” for me is the gear. Listening to music is just something that I do, in the same way I breathe. whether critically or recreational or while under the influence. :slight_smile:

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IMO the hobby is the buying, selling, listening and interacting with the community but I was mostly buying and selling. I’m starting to think of gear as a tool rather than the focus just like I do with phones and PC’s now. Once I have the time (and space) to put together a modest system, I think I can enjoy the other aspects of the hobby without feeling obligated (or FOMO) to upgrade or buy more.

… I should also add that if I don’t sell my towers before I move, I’m probably going to just hold onto them forever. That Marantz Stereo 70s sure looks nice :eyes:

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The hobby is listening, I can understand for some it’s the gear, and for others it’s FOMO AKA: buying and selling. Yet the latter two are different hobbies to the music, the audio magic that draws us in. Or a means to reach the listening?

This is a very good question, and should be a disclosure when offering opinions.

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Interesting replies, thanks people. For me it is the listening as much as learning about, choosing and assembling a system. I think it’s good that it can accommodate this kind of variety but I think I agree that it does (maybe) make a difference on the opinions we might give.

As for my hifi goals this year. I want to finish my preamp build by the end of spring. It’s been a long time in planning as I have made it more complex, simplified it, added more, simplified again and on and on… but I do think I now have a firm grasp of what it is for and how it will fit in to a stack. I’ve assembled about half the parts and should make a start next month. If I can, I would like to start assembling parts for my Dynalo build toward the end of the year. That one is going to take a while. It has a lot of components and so the price pushes up very easily.

In the meantime, I have given my first two headphones to various nieces and so I have a small gap. I keep thinking about the Denon 5200 I sent back… I might need to try again.

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This was harder to answer than I expected. My first thought was “of course it’s all about the listening” but then I realized I actually have 2 hobbies:

  1. Listening to and discovering new music
  2. Learning about and collecting audio equipment

The first is permanent, and is my lifelong passion. The second supports the first, and at times can become my main hobby, until I reach a point of satisfaction, and then the urges die down, I buy less and less and return to enjoying the music.

I went through this in the 90s when I was into 2 channel, and stopped when I reached a point that I liked what I was hearing. I think I’ve more or less reached that point with headfi, where I’m not planning on making any more expensive purchases, but I’m still satisfying the urge to buy something by buying cables, tubes and isolation tweaks.

It’s interesting that I’ve reached this point, because I wasn’t expecting it. And I’m under no illusion that I have the “best” system ever, but I do seem to be content with what I have.

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You stated it more eloquently than I did. I didn’t call music a hobby because it didn’t feel right, it’s not a strong enough word. :slight_smile:

I went out to dinner with my family today for our son’s birthday and the restaurant was playing Roberta Flack’s Killing Me Softly with His Song and I stopped in the middle of the salad bar to just listen. Shitty overhead speakers, the captivation at that moment was intense.

I will say that as I’m near the finish line with my 2-CH, very very close, I’ve been delving into way more music and exploring tracks on albums that I’d rarely played previously. Yes that’s because of the system, and in a way it’s a chicken and egg thing.

I could give up the “hobby” of gear as reach a point of contentment with what I’ve put together. I could never not listen to music.

This year I will begin to create my first bonsai tree. That will be a hobby.

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idk man, doesn’t look too difficult…

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I think part of what made it harder to answer for me is that by learning to build my own gear I’ve turned the acquiring of devices into a hobby. I realised a while back that I am unlikely to ever buy an amplifier or preamp again. If I need one I will build one and this has fundamentally changed how I experience both hifi gear and music listening. My plans are all about components, learning amplifier topography, building. I am interested in the new shiny things. I love looking at them, hearing about how people are enjoying them. Seeing how they are installing them.

Interesting things to think about.

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I love learning about new gear, doing the research, finding something that fits
my budget, etc. But it has always been about the music for me…and the way
it impacts my very soul. I’m one of those who feels music seemingly to my core
very often and can be moved to a tear by a powerful crescendo or a simple,
beautiful chord progression or melodic line performed by a musician who really understands it.
So for me the gear has allowed me to hear the intracacies and depths of music to a degree that I never dreamed was possible. I continue to be amazed by each new tweak and the difference it can make in my sheer enjoyment of the music.
Interestingly, my goal the past few months is to turn off the stereo or headphone chain and get out to hear live music and support the young musicians I encounter there. A result is that I seem to appreciate my home
listening even more…with a sense of freshness and again, wonder at the amazing quality of sound that the gear gives to me. (See the circle there? lol,)

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You folks who understand and can build are at a different level. I had an uncle
who could do that, but I have no clue. Kudos.

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I mean, I’ve built maybe ten amplifiers now and seriously, most learning is by fucking up. First Whammy I built didn’t work, so I’ve built that twice, ACA Mini I’ve built three times. First one was very noisy. Second one worked but I was not happy with the soldering or the chassis build after a year more practice and now I’m finishing the final version. I’ve messed about with passive attenuation circuits and opamps and learnt a lot from failing…

It’s fun. I understand much less than I can solder and that’s what gives me a long term interest. I’ve just about got my head head around opamp circuits after a couple of years. One day, maybe, I might know enough to design my own amp.

I think most people could do it but it does need the investment of time and real interest in spending time and money on it.

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Absolutely agree with everything you’ve said in the message, especially this part. That’s how I feel too.

Listening to music is the active part of the hobby, where you really get down to it and assess the quality of your setup, while the gear is more of a passive “wait for the box to arrive and then plug it in”, but by building it yourself it’s now an active “wait for components to arrive, get them together, test that everything works, be proud if everything does indeed work or get back to the drawing board and fix it”.

It adds an extra layer of personalization where you can freely experiment with other types of components/circuit topology, which means you now have to do more research about what you think could work best for you, and I always love to pour hours upon hours researching, for example, about different brands/models of capacitors people put in the smoothing section of a PSU and what are the changes in the sound.

Also, I find soldering to be a very relaxing/fun activity and one that I always look forward to do, which makes sense since I’ve always loved assembling Lego stuff.

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For me, it’s always been anout the music. Your question is both interesting and compelling. As it relates to headphones, I find myself buying gear to make my collection more versatile. It is much easier when it comes to speakers as far as buying 1 versatile system and components. With headphones, the musical genre is important (ie Grados sound great with classical, but are awful when it comes to thrash metal). With headphones, I choose to buy around the types of genres of music I listen to, as well as my own sound signature preferences. The accompanying gear, I buy mostly due to synergy with the chain and headphone pairing.

A good parallel question can be asked with musicans as well. For me, whether it was guitar, bass, or drums…it also has been about the music and performance enjoyment. But many in that hobby get hung up on acquiring gear as well. I also dont believe that it is a coincidence that many of the great musicians of the world have also transitioned eventually into building their own gear and or modifying it (Eddie Van Halen, Tom Morello, etc.).

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For me the question about what the “hobby” is, isn’t an easy one to answer. There’s the dopamine hit of opening a new box and playing with a new toy, but I don’t think that can really sustain you over the long term.

I think one of my favorite things about audio is that we all get the same file, CD, record as a starting point, and from that one starting point, an infinite number of sonic presentations are possible. It blows me away that the CDs I used to listen to as a teenager have all this information that I never knew was there.

I also love how attention to detail matters. How much care you take in how you position your speakers, cables, vibration management all of these things add to the infinite possibilities and can allow you to go deeper and deeper into the music. I was at a dinner with some wine makers and distillers and hearing them talk about the complexity of their process and the care they take really reminded me of audiophiles and the small tweaks we make to our systems. I remember asking one distiller if he cared whether other people can tell/appreciate his process and he just smiled and said “I do this for me, to make the best rum I can, I don’t really care what anyone else thinks”. I loved that and it reminded me of me tinkering with wire/cables in the basement and trying them out on my HP and 2 Channel rig.

The other thing I really love is that while training yourself as a listener is rewarding, it’s not necessary to perceive the difference between a nice 2 Channel HiFi setup and someone’s Home Theater setup from a big box store. I love it when people say “I probably couldn’t even tell the difference” and knowing without a shadow of a doubt that they absolutely can.

I was recently on a trip and my sister in law saw me listening to my DAP and was making smug comments about how good her APP sound (which I know as I also own a pair) and how wired stuff seems silly in 2023. I just smiled and asked if she wanted to try listening to my wired earbuds on the DAP. In like 3 seconds she just said…yea that’s better.

One of my favorites was when a buddy came by our place, who was super skeptical after hearing a bit from me about my setup. We’re sitting on my couch with our backs about a foot and a half from the back wall and I hit play and a couple seconds later he looks behind us to see if there were any speakers back there. He couldn’t believe that level of imaging was possible without a bunch of speakers everywhere :rofl:

A friend of the family, a musician and middle-school band teacher came over and I handed him the ipad I sometimes use with Roon and just let him play around for a couple hours. A couple months later I hear he’s getting himself a TT and set of speakers. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: When I asked how he was enjoying it, he said something like “It’s just wonderful hearing music…the way it’s meant to be heard” and I thought that was a great way to put it.

I think it’s all those things wrapped up in a love of and for music.

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I let my girlfriend sit in my chair in the sweet-spot last night. After a few minutes she asked if we can get a second matching comfortable chair so she can actually listen to the music the same way as me and not off to the side :joy:

In all seriousness I’m not sure if the sweet spot is wide enough to accommodate the request :thinking: And I feel so really bad now that she actually has appreciation and understanding of the sweet spot.

This is a request and positioning dilemma I will work on for 2024.

Edit to add, I’m not sure if I could realistically deal with being positioned off center from the speakers. :flushed: I mean, yes I do it daily in the HT room and no it has zero negative effect on me but it seems different in the 2 channel.

This is turning into a serious dilemma in my mind now :thinking:

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So, not even a month…

  • Just have the LCD-5 and Susvara now. BF2/64 is going on sale and the RNHP is doing work-desk duty along with the Diablo for IEMs.
  • IEMs are down to five. The Ace 2 was a gift to a family member, but they don’t use it enough and it makes a loud squealing noise when pairing with their certain model of phone. It’ll probably be back in my possession. Luckily that wasn’t the only gift I got them.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I’ve started to notice with even audio, I enjoy it more when I have bare essentials over a wide array of “things”. Part of that probably comes down to being a tinkerer at heart and trying to make certain electronics cover use-cases normally outside their intended ones growing up. I also get a bit ancy when I have stuff sitting around doing nothing for extended periods of time. I’ve been so enthralled by the performance of the 2541/13R combo, the former doing double-duty as AIO for less power-hungry devices. They do everything I’d need from a desktop audio setup.

Though I can’t say that the current volatility of the tech industry hasn’t effected how I go about spending. It’s one thing to observe it, like I’ve done for years, but then to experience it first-hand —I’m not in financial trouble or anything, but I’ve started reexamining my superfluous spending on audio equipment.

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