I think Ive had the most comradery with people of other hobbies. car hobby, watches , even guys that spend a ton of their golf clubs. They all seem to have this weird understanding for our chase of spending a lot on stuff that seem weird to most people
2 Likes
My guess is there is a certain personality trait that all people like us share that causes us to chase high levels of understanding, experience, and performance in certain things that we enjoy. And that causes us to spend an inordinate amount of time and money on something that most people donāt give much of a second thought to.
3 Likes
An audiophile is someone who spends more and more to gain less and less.
4 Likes
Personally I kinda disagree with that one, and I also think statements like that drive people away from the hobby as well. I think it can get that way if you do things wrong, but if you play your cards right I really donāt think thatās going to happen to most people. For me itās only been going up and continually getting rewarded for going up. I think if you were really gaining that much less as you continued to go up things would be very different. Of course it depends on the person, but I think you have to spend an extraordinary amount to start hitting the point where you really donāt get much more
11 Likes
Everythingā¦drives my wife nuts. Bowling, shooting, skiing, running, cycling, audio, tools, just to name a few of the top hobbies Iāve engrossed myself in over the last 20 years. Especially things that require a skill of precision and/or offers a lot to research and gather information about, tend to draw me in.
4 Likes
Like any hobby there will always be different levels as you spend more time on the hobby and gain experience. Everyone needs to start somewhere, decades down the line if you are serious about just about anything folks tend to master their skills. except for the stupid people, they just make the same mistakes over for a lifetime and never actually growā¦thatās a different conversation though
4 Likes
Itās a joke! Keep your shirt on ladies. But you know thatās how the layman sees it. We know that audio is not the only rabbit hole where thing balloon in price the more selective/rare/desired the item become.
Stamp collecting (do people collect stamps still?) Coin collecting, beanie babies collecting (remember those?)
At least in the audio realm thereās a personal gain and satisfaction thatās real and goes beyond the sometimes irrational value people place on thingsā¦ intangible things even.
NFTās anyone?
EDIT: additional thought, stereo equipment is one of the high ticket goods people tend to keep the longest! So from an amortized standpoint, itās actually cheaper in that way.
3 Likes
So are watch people tuners arguably for cars. And golfers as well except guess you can earn money if your good even if your just a hobbyist
Funny thing about this is watch obsessed Kevin OāLeary is making pictures of his rare one of a kind watches a bunch of nfts for other watch collectors
I do feel it is important to acknowledge that beyond a one source and one listening device none of this is necessary, itās fun, but we do it for that. When my partner asks me why I need another headphone I ask her if she needs to go out to a cafe with friends, or to a restaurant and eat. She does that a lot more than I do and I spend my spare money on other things. Once I frame it like that she understands how I am seeing it. It needs no more justification than any other enjoyment as long as the money spent is not actually needed for something important.
One of my favorite sayings about knowledge or skills is (paraphrased) this: when you begin you know nothing and everything is easy and fun. When you begin to be proficient you know too much and everything is complex, then you master it and everything becomes simple and fun again. I think a lot of the collecting and trying out and questioning is part of the middle phase.
4 Likes
When we all get our neural implants then we will spend hours discussing music transfer techniques (MQA sucks for direct neural decoding), and neural implant/brain bit rates, and the merits of different brain cables.
7 Likes
Time has progressed for me in this hobby. My experience and personal preferences have grown along with the deep hole I have dug into my finances.
I have been forced to find creative ways to finance my slight addiction as it has clearly become something of an obsession at times, and clearly more than a light interest I find that yes there is a sort of pressure to keep up with a certain level of quality.
I did not realize until recently that I go OUT OF MY WAY to avoid certain topics, threads, posts and discussions. I find myself avoiding knowledge of new equipment and discussions pertaining to entire categories and brands. Some days I swear that I prefer to be ignorant of certain knowledge and experiences simply for my own sanity and piece of mind.
I know damned well that there are so very many ābetterā pieces of equipment folks around me are enjoying but there is more and more I just genuinely want to be blissfully unaware or. Knowledge in this hobby can be a dangerous thing especially since someone somewhere is always trying to peddle something more beautiful or of utmost performance to any potential customer that will listen. The same goes for my well meaning audiophile affecionados who want to share their joy at something new to them. The problem with knowledge is that I then want the experience too and in this hobby y some experiences can ruin you for others.
Case in point, is that I have been avoiding certain TOTL pieces because I just donāt want to hear something I canāt I UNhear later on. Sometimes ignorance is bliss 
all this makes sense to me, YMMV
8 Likes
I 100% do the same thing. I avoid listening to something that I know is going to be out of reach for the foreseeable future. I generally keep the level of gear I let myself demo within the range of my next logical upgrade.
2 Likes
I am SO lucky that there are no high end HP shops around me and I donāt have any high end collector buddies.
I am sure that if I had a chance to hear some of the pieces that @MON recommends, I would be so screwed! 
2 Likes
This conversation has really helped me. Iāve been trying to decide if I wanted a pair of Fostex 610s or a Denon 7200 all year. I was listening to the pair of ATH-MSR7b I have the other night while reading some replies here and I thought to myself, you know what, these do have a really nice full base. Maybe something pricier would have a little bit more to it, but how much and would I really enjoy them more? Not as in appreciate, but as in, when I am just digging some base heavy music and enjoying myself. I may still get one of those headphones some day but I am going to stop worrying about it as much.
3 Likes
Just as a general reply, I was really unimpressed by the TH-610ās.
And I have always had good thoughts about the D7200 in spite of having never heard them. 
Thanks! Itās also fun to get the less fashionable choice 
2 Likes
Ching ching, most logical upgrades at this point w/ the equipment i have on hand would likely require an MSRP upgrade of close to $20k in source equipment alone not including cost of HPās and upgrade cables, (which i shudder at based on MSRP prices.). At this point i understand the importance of matching the quality of the equipment especially for the purpose of synergy. There is no point to purchasing a $5-$6K HP and mating it w/ a $1.5-$2.5k amp, you will always be wondering what it SHOULD/could sound like. The fine details, the almost intangible aspects that the boutique, often overbuilt, high end pieces can get you are what it takes to really make that next level worthwhile. I just donāt like HPās enough to go there, iād rather waste my money on 2 channel and HT at this point. This is a great and extremely satisfying hobby but it smashes the bank account hard.
3 Likes
Cannot wait for the neural implants. Allows me to converse with Wintermuteā¦
2 Likes
Iāve been thinking a lot about my recent experience in trying to set up my Omega speakers and wanted to put down some of my fleeting thoughts before I forget everything and get distracted by the next shiny object.
This is primarily a 2-CH observation, but some things are applicable to the hobby in general.
It occurred to me that when we listen to a system that is not our own. Weāre hearing someone elseās implementation even if when comparing the same gear. The room, the cables, the listening position but most importantly the way the speakers are placed bears such an impact into the sound that comes out that we really canāt ever truly listen to a system unless we do the set up. Everything else is us hearing someone elseās interpretation of that gear and how they set it up.
Going about this exercise I realized that I was implementing a system from scratch where it was the first time that I was able to think about the āchainā in itās entirety and come up with a sonic direction, hand pick components and implement/tune those components with the intent of every choice being to continue to chase that ideal direction I decided to set out to seek.
Itās been an eye opening experience as to how much control there can be in making those choices to move the sound this way and that. Granted there are choices that move the sound a little and choices that move the sound a lot but itās also not linear, there are ways to course correct and with each introduction of a new component or link in the chain, thereās also the opportunity to go back and re-evaluate previous decisions.
So I say all of this because when you listen to a system you donāt intimately know, that you didnāt put your blood sweat and tears into, thereās no what to fully understand the capability of the system or ever what direction the person that put that system together was shooting for. We can ask, have those conversations and even judge whether they hit their target based on what they were looking for. But thatās the thing, their target may be completely different than your target, and therefore we can never really make a decision about X being better than Y and Z being better than both X and Y, without putting those choices into their entirety of context within the chain and within the choices that person what shooting for.
Iām rambling now and I will probably come back and edit this to make more sense, but I wanted to put the thoughts down first. Unfortunately we spend too much time talking about gear and not enough time working with that gear to get the most out of of it and I starting to feel that most people donāt spend enough time and energy to fully understand the components they bought before moving on to something else because they didnāt ālikeā what they bought.
Thereās a surprising amount of performance wiggle room, or window of sweet spot operation for just about everything youāre going to buy. Iām feeling now that Iāve had the opportunity to put a system together from scratch with a clear idea of what direction I wanted to go towards, that any system that isnāt put together in such a way is not going to reveal itās full potential to you as a listener.
8 Likes