Out of curiosity, I just did the math on what I actually paid for my main HP chain, from Power Plant to MYSPHERE, and it landed at $8K + cost of cables (couldn’t be bothered to add up the cables, but it’s mostly mid-tier AudioQuest stuff), though if I had to buy it all at new prices, that number could easily be double.
(I’ve spent much more than that since I have six headphones and three desktop amps because I can’t bring myself to sell certain things, lol, but just talking about main chain here.)
I’m hoping to go one more round on DAC upgrades, so if I buy a d1-core and whatever DDC/cabling upgrades that go along with it, I probably wouldn’t be too far off from that $20K mark either.
Though to be honest, sometimes when I’m listening to music on my Quicksilver late at night, I still feel like this: