I thought a lot about starting this thread, it’s not exactly in the spirit of WBF where upgrading and ongoing spending is the order of the day, and I’m going to risk losing my audiophile stripes.
But I thought I might combine comments about the beginning of the end of my career as a free-spending hifi nut with the whole psychology of deciding to call it a day on the obsessive need for the next best thing, and assumed impulse to keep spending.
So, I kinda realised deep down 2 years ago that when I swapped out my London apartment which pretty much looked after itself, for an old historic chapel that needs constant feeding (this monster taking up funds on all the things I couldn’t manage re major refurb ahead of moving in), coupled to now having a new Finance Director to have to approve funding decisions (yes, you guessed it, my GF Righteous Ra), that my audiophile spending habits would change forever.
I took the punt on ploughing in $90k to creating the new space and power to it, and got unbelievably lucky in how good it’s turned out. I can genuinely say given the choice of this room and my modest gear versus eg Mike Lavigne’s gear in my old space, I wouldn’t swap my current setup.
This good fortune with less and less ability to spend on audio, and the absolute need to invest in the building, is now a happy balance in my mind.
With the wholly positive outcome to my analog reinstall, and the most amazing epiphany of simple optimisation of my Zus proving to be startlingly effective, revolutionary even, the last 72 hours have been by a massive gap the greatest sound I’ve ever had at home, and for the first time I’m bullish it can compare w some of the best systems I’ve heard.
And so the decision has come to pass to start winding down. No more obsessing on a SOTA idler tt, or horns. No more TOTL accessories from my favourite designers. All I want to do is complete some of the lines I’ve nearly finished with - a couple more Sablon Elite pwr cords, a few more Symposium Rollerblocks, beta test ultrasonic lp cleaner I’m currently trialling.
Beyond that, my only remaining discussion is an affordable streamer/server option, and some judicious diffuser panels to my space.
But these are sporadic purchases that are not going to take up all my savings or get in the way of more essential non-audio spending.
How do I feel about this? In one way, a little sad. Audio spending/major upgrading has been a constant feature in my life for the last two decades, it still feels weird not to be planning the next tt or spkrs package.
OTOH, it’s totally liberating to have a room that works, has vindicated my choices of gear, and I’m finally “in the moment”.
Indeed, my thoughts are more and more going to turn to just thinking about music, and how to broaden my classical lp collection now that my sound is so conducive to natural sounding acoustic material.
But I thought I might combine comments about the beginning of the end of my career as a free-spending hifi nut with the whole psychology of deciding to call it a day on the obsessive need for the next best thing, and assumed impulse to keep spending.
So, I kinda realised deep down 2 years ago that when I swapped out my London apartment which pretty much looked after itself, for an old historic chapel that needs constant feeding (this monster taking up funds on all the things I couldn’t manage re major refurb ahead of moving in), coupled to now having a new Finance Director to have to approve funding decisions (yes, you guessed it, my GF Righteous Ra), that my audiophile spending habits would change forever.
I took the punt on ploughing in $90k to creating the new space and power to it, and got unbelievably lucky in how good it’s turned out. I can genuinely say given the choice of this room and my modest gear versus eg Mike Lavigne’s gear in my old space, I wouldn’t swap my current setup.
This good fortune with less and less ability to spend on audio, and the absolute need to invest in the building, is now a happy balance in my mind.
With the wholly positive outcome to my analog reinstall, and the most amazing epiphany of simple optimisation of my Zus proving to be startlingly effective, revolutionary even, the last 72 hours have been by a massive gap the greatest sound I’ve ever had at home, and for the first time I’m bullish it can compare w some of the best systems I’ve heard.
And so the decision has come to pass to start winding down. No more obsessing on a SOTA idler tt, or horns. No more TOTL accessories from my favourite designers. All I want to do is complete some of the lines I’ve nearly finished with - a couple more Sablon Elite pwr cords, a few more Symposium Rollerblocks, beta test ultrasonic lp cleaner I’m currently trialling.
Beyond that, my only remaining discussion is an affordable streamer/server option, and some judicious diffuser panels to my space.
But these are sporadic purchases that are not going to take up all my savings or get in the way of more essential non-audio spending.
How do I feel about this? In one way, a little sad. Audio spending/major upgrading has been a constant feature in my life for the last two decades, it still feels weird not to be planning the next tt or spkrs package.
OTOH, it’s totally liberating to have a room that works, has vindicated my choices of gear, and I’m finally “in the moment”.
Indeed, my thoughts are more and more going to turn to just thinking about music, and how to broaden my classical lp collection now that my sound is so conducive to natural sounding acoustic material.
