I’ve just got round to reading this, and it includes a revealing comment:
In other words, once the excitement of having a new $$$$$ shiny box wears off, the actual process of listening to music is something he finds rather boring. I can’t help feeling that audio reviews should ideally be carried out by someone who actually likes listening to music….
Moved a big distance to a smaller space a few years ago. Had to disperse a lot of audio gear, LPs, accessories, that I would no longer have room for. I'm left with something like 1500 CDs, a pair of speakers suitable for a desktop, an amp, a sub, a rolling roadie rack to hold the amp & sub and Blu-Ray player. Living in a smaller space would mean spending more time listening via headphones. So I got the Topping E30 and L30 and, after getting a number of different headphones, settling on Drop 6XX. I used to buy headphones pretty regularly, got something like 6 pair I bought within the last five years. But I'm through with lateral moves. I'd have to spend a lot of money I don't have to do much better than the 6XXs.
That idea of the need for new and "shiny" got a hold of me a long time ago. But what I've been noticing as of late is how that sound all by itself ought to be "boring", there really isn't an aspect of the sound I'm getting now that excites me the same way as, say, the Stax earspeakers that used to be my daily driver. At the same time, I'm also not noticing the sound of the gear as much as the really wide variety of sounds when moving from recording to recording. The sound of the music itself is easier to hear. Nothing sounds "thin" and "bright" like the Stax 'phones can. The sound is transparent in that there seems to be minimum intermodulation of different sounds, of all the different voices in the mix. It's easier to listen into the music with this gear. The Topping E/L30 is not glamorous looking, not "shiny". And its sound isn't "shiny". It just seems to get out of the way of the music, not calling attention to itself, like the Stax or Philips Fidelio headphones can.
And after all is said and done, I get more sonic pleasure from playing my own acoustic guitar, a sweet-toned Martin DRS2. There's more nuance than I ever hear from recordings. The better I get at playing guitar, the less I want to hear a recording. I'm playing music with others more than I used to, find that much more satisfying than playing a recording I've heard many times before. If I had a spare $50,000 to burn, I'd spend more on guitars than on shiny audio widgets. YMMV of course.
Stereophile exists to promote audio gear [mostly] and recordings [slightly]. And I suppose Jim Austin is between something of a rock and a hard place. If $50,000 worth of disc transport + DAC is audibly indistinguishable from $500 worth of the same, what would be the point of the $50,000 CD/SACD player with specs that are actually worse than the $500 Blu-Ray player + DAC? How is this justified? Because it's "shiny"?