I stopped worrying about this whole chasing/upgrading/diminishing returns thing a little while ago. I simply don’t care anymore. I have been doing an assessment of where I was at with my own audio situation recently and have come to the conclusion that I am pretty much set. I get a great amount of enjoyment from the setups that I currently own and from my own perspective, I don’t stand to gain significantly more enjoyment of music by spending thousands of dollars more on gear. In fact, just the opposite is true. Extracting maybe 10% (or less) more sonic performance while spending 10x the money is bad math no matter how you look at it. To me it’s a trap. As things age out and/or fail I’ll replace with like or better, but the replacement will deliver the value I feel it needs to or I will not buy it.
So, does that mean I am never ever going to have a Susvara? A Focal Utopia? a WA5 amp? A Cord Dave? More than likely. And I don’t care. That stuff is not for me. Those things are just more bad math to me. I’m going to just stay in my MidFi lane and be happy. It’s very liberating, actually.
See folks - this here is a man who has won the audiophile game!
Happy with the sound he has, and content to stay that way.
That, boys and girls, is what we call the whole damn point! Mr. Raptor, I salute you, and if you’re ever going to be in New England, feel free to drop me a line, and I’ll buy you a beer
I sure appreciate that. Same goes, man. This whole thing kinda came to a head not too long ago. It occurred to me that for me to sit there and not be satisfied with things or feel bad just because every piece in the system wasn’t some kind of megabuck item that I couldn’t afford was getting old, not to mention counterproductive and downright stupid. I got caught up in the chase, and it was diminishing my enjoyment of the hobby and of music itself.
We all do what we can do. Simple as that. You can’t live your life smashing your nose against that store window, longing for something you can’t have. That is just a waste of time and energy. Once I let all of that garbage go, a weight was lifted. And the hobby became fun again.
I quit worrying about diminishing returns and cost justification a long time ago. I have fun trying things I’m curious about whether that’s a pair of sub-$100 budget IEMs/buds or the $4k DCA Expanse. I have found that if I have the money to afford it, trying out gear that I’m genuinely interested in brings me more than enough enjoyment to justify the cost even if I end up not particularly liking the gear. Ever since I let go of the idea of maximizing my dollar in this hobby and started just enjoying the journey and the expetiences, I have been much happier. If I ever reach a point where that gear sampling needs to be significantly curtailed or stop, Inwould have no problem with that and thanks to my experience during my exploratory journey, I even have a very good idea of what budget minded gear I would go with.
