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Why do you think a few members have an 'alcoholic anonymous' vibe towards the audiophile community? It seems a harmless hobby as far as things go?

...
Do you feel that you have gradually zeroed in on what do you want in an audio system? And are you there?
Truly enjoyed your answer.

I am and have been genuinely very happy in downsizing my footprint in general. And I can get my mind blown easily by my downsized audio shrine. Which is not quite a budget system, but certainly is a fraction of my previous audio shrine.

I did receive a recent windfall after the company I work in was acquired. I spent exactly zero seconds in thinking about investing in my audio system.

it would have different 20 years ago
 
Since I asked others what their remaining motivations are... even though they clearly have all the know how and they are members I lik to follow given their perspectives...

For myself.. . the missing link is merely related to the loss of my large dream system in my pre divorce house. I will most likely never regain that again. I have downsized and it is a trend I shall keep up. And while I rationally know I have not sacrificed audio fidelity, I do miss the environment.

It's not about sound quality (at least for me) as. much as it is for missing that one moment when I moved into a dream house with my dream girl and splurged on my dream system. My current system in my opinion sounds better, but it will never recapture that magic. And that's in my head, not in any measurable system capability.

I guess that partially answers the question I ended with in my reply to you. There’s quite a bit of life experience mixed in there!

Occasionally, I wondered what I could be happy with. How paired down could my system be such that it would still engage me in that “ audio Magic” sense that gets me to just sit down in the listening see between a pair of speakers? Otherwise I could just go and enjoy music elsewhere, on our kitchen, smart speaker, My car stereo, my iPhone, my desktop watching YouTube music videos. I’d still certainly enjoy music, but it takes something a little extra to have me luxuriating in sound quality and wanting to sit down and listen, audiophile style.

I have this old pair of Thiel Model 02 Speakers - stand mount two-ways, produced on the cheap before they got really high-end and time phase coherent. They were my wife’s when I met her, picked out for her by her file, brother father in the early 80s.
I fell in love with the sound of those speakers.

And ever since whenever I’ve put them in my system, I find myself so besotted, I think
“ this is it, this is probably all I need!”

But after a little while, maybe a week or two or three, I start to become aware of what I’m missing that I get from my bigger more expensive floorstanding speakers. Overall level of refinement, beauty, scale. And then I’m back to my floorstanding speakers.

If I ever find myself in a situation like yours, losing the Dream house in dream system, these are the speakers that are going to become my fallback system.
 
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If I ever find myself in a situation like yours, losing the Dream house in dream system, these are the speakers that are going to become my fallback system.
You are genuine. Thanks. for that reply.

And I hope you never ever find yourself in that situation.
 
Truly enjoyed your answer.

I am and have been genuinely very happy in downsizing my footprint in general. And I can get my mind blown easily by my downsized audio shrine. Which is not quite a budget system, but certainly is a fraction of my previous audio shrine.

I did receive a recent windfall after the company I work in was acquired. I spent exactly zero seconds in thinking about investing in my audio system.

it would have different 20 years ago

Nice place to be!

I get where you are coming from. Even when I set up my tiny little Spendor S3/5s they can blow my mind. Total disappearing act, amazing imaging with a nice sense of texture density, and gorgeous tone.

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve paired down my speaker collection.

This is the collection of loudspeakers I had altogether at one time, In the night, distant past
 
I generally find the whole audiophile thing to just be a cult of misinformation and excess consumption. I feel getting sucked into it often means one lacks critical thinking skills and is gullible, and those traits often bleed into other areas of life. I've known people who have fallen for the marketing and at first it's just speakers, then it morphed into pseudo-sciences like crystals and sacred geometry, and that morphed into Qanon stuff which ended up destroying their marriages and most relationships they had.

For those reasons I don't really find the BS around audio to be harmless at all, I feel it is poison for the brain and that it's been so prevalent for so long that's normalized to a concerning degree.
 
I might have missed it 24 pages deep, but many of the people that get sucked into audiophilia are high achievers in other areas. They have the money to spend on gadgets, so likely successful professionally. Or they have a high interest in gadgets and consider themselves technically minded.

A little exploration, reading reviews, well-intended auditions and they find themselves a few thousand dollars poorer but enjoying the hobby.

They eventually are further enlightened about the reality of the industry (from ASR or elsewhere) and that their prior purchases were likely misguided. They were duped, and find themselves in unfamiliar territory with injured pride.

They now feel reformed, maybe jaded, and don’t want others to be gullible the way they were. It all adds up to me. No addiction necessary, but still a commonality of reform.
 
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The endgame is just arguing on the internet while no longer listening to music
I mean... that's what I do!

PS I have some pretty strong opinions about Lip Balm, too -- although I prefer to call it lippy-chappy stuff.
I am all about ChapStick Classic Medicated.
Change my mind.
:cool:
 
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Sounds about right... tax payer dollars hard at work there. ;)


JSmith
A little more information (shouldn't be necessary but based on the comment):
So, you don't think that was funded by those of us that were there? (10,000 men & 4000 women): The Australian jet was leased.
There was ZERO civilian communications other than local cell phones (no communications off the island due to the severe expense of bandwidth).
AT&T was the communications monopoly. (You could, if you had money way above what you were getting for being there. And could for very short periods of time like in one minute blocks, if you were willing to pay for it [investing in leasing a round trip for beer on a jet was cheaper])
I'm guessing that you have never been in a place that basically had NO communication with the outside world.
It could be done but at great expense.
Teletype, remember that?
There were 3 LOCAL TV channels. All run by the same people. There seemed to be a Star Trek Channel, a sports Channel & on that seemed to have some children's dinosaur ("Barney"?) on it any time it was switched on.
If there was a death, extreme illness or a horrific accident in your family somewhere off Island, the Red Cross would get notification to one of the ships captains who would then relay that information to someone on shore, who would then get it to you.

Been Eclipsed lately?
For those that do not know (and care to): the Location Algol Perseus is:
Antique star chart etching with Greek hero with sword in one hand and Medusa's head in the other.


Perseus and Medusa from Uranographia by Johannes Hevelius.
Image via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

Bottom line: Algol has the nickname the Demon Star because it represents the head of Medusa.

This variable star probably intrigued the ancients with its fluctuating behavior. (Are you an Ancient, too? [Intriguing, I think])

The Demon Star brightens and dims with clockwork regularity.
SCIENCE (like it or not, it's a large part of ASR) tells us this:
It’s an eclipsing binary star. This kind of binary star is composed of two stars, with each star revolving around the other.
From Earth, we see the orbital plane of this binary star almost exactly edge-on. Therefore, when the dimmer of the
two stars swings in front of the brighter star, we see Algol at minimum brightness.
It completes one cycle in 2 days, 20 hours and 49 minutes.

I sense a dichotomy here.
 
I'm not much of an old hand in the audiophile community. Audio Science Review was my starting off point. I've noticed some of the more experienced members have an 'alcoholic anonymous' vibe towards the audiophile community they were formerly a part of. They talk about their former life as an audiophile in a bitter way like they escaped from a dangerous hobby.
There's such a lack of integrity in the general audiophool market that most of those
with any pride are ashamed or embarrassed to be associated with it.
 
Interesting article in the NYTimes today about declining sales in luxury brands. In this case it is being blamed on skyrocketing prices and declining quality
^"Which prices have skyrocketed? The better question is which haven’t.
From October 2019 to April 2024, the cost of Prada’s popular Galleria Saffiano bag increased 111 percent. In the same period, the cost of Louis Vuitton’s canvas Speedy bag doubled, and Gucci’s Marmont small matelassé shoulder bag went up by 75 percent. Chanel is particularly notorious: Its iconic medium 2.55 leather flap bag, which cost $5,800 in 2019, will now set you back $10,800 — and is increasingly the subject of quality complaints."

LOL, Well DUH, you'd have to be living in a cave not to know and feel what's happened to the US economy over the last 4 years. :facepalm:
 
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I don't care if the luxury handbags or other luxury items, including exotic audio equipment, get priced into the stratosphere. I worry when everyday needs like food, shelter and healthcare take that same ride.
 
I don't care if the luxury handbags or other luxury items, including exotic audio equipment, get priced into the stratosphere. I worry when everyday needs like food, shelter and healthcare take that same ride.
Well... shelter's gotten pretty pricey where we live.
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Well... shelter's gotten pretty pricey where we live.
I can just imagine what your property taxes are there! :eek:
Time to move bro., I could never have afforded to retire if I'd stayed in Chicago.
But then food prices been breaking everyone's back and that's all due to fuel costs.
Mid 2018 I was buying gas for under $1.90 a gallon at the 7-11 across the street, by 2022 they had doubled to over $4 a gallon. insanity.
95% of everything we buy has to be transported at some point. :(
 
I can just imagine what your property taxes are there! :eek:
Time to move bro., I could never have afforded to retire if I'd stayed in Chicago.
But then food prices been breaking everyone's back and that's all due to fuel costs.
Mid 2018 I was buying gas for under $1.90 a gallon at the 7-11 across the street, by 2022 they had doubled to over $4 a gallon. insanity.
95% of everything we buy has to be transported at some point. :(
And not like a lot of the energy companies are striving for the future particularly, or efficiency or lowest emissions, etc
 
Addiction is addiction, it's as simple as that. Anything that caused a problem in anyone's life that they keep repeating and can't stop is an addiction.

Video games, gamming, and cell phones are just as bad a opioid addiction in this country. NA teaches about addiction NOT the actual drug of choice.

AA kind of leaves that out. Its funny most meetings coffee, cigarettes and cell phones are worse than smokin' crack in my opinion. They will walk right out
in front of a car just jabbering away as if they are in complete control of being on planet Uranus.

Drugs and drinking (same thing) have never been the problem, addiction is.

I had a boss that was a full blown trava-holics. He wouldn't pay parts bills so he could travel. He owed over 2 million when I quit working for him. He
would never smoke or drink but he sure would spend other peoples money so he could travel. He was one sick puppy.

Some people can't shut up. That's pretty high on my walk away list too. They remind me of a yappin' dog. STFU. LOL

Regards
All forms of compulsion.
 
I can just imagine what your property taxes are there! :eek:
Time to move bro., I could never have afforded to retire if I'd stayed in Chicago.
But then food prices been breaking everyone's back and that's all due to fuel costs.
Mid 2018 I was buying gas for under $1.90 a gallon at the 7-11 across the street, by 2022 they had doubled to over $4 a gallon. insanity.
95% of everything we buy has to be transported at some point. :(
Property taxes are interesting here. We have no state income tax. Local school systems are funded entirely by town property taxes.
For a variety of technical and practical reasons -- yes, our taxes are very, very high.
We still love it here (well, I do, at any rate).
It is, unfortunately, not cheap to live in the northeastern US.

EDIT: Oh, perhaps I should mention that I am on our town's Finance Committee*. Then again, maybe I shouldn't. ;)

_____________
* For those outside of New England and unfamiliar our the interesting, extremely democratic self-governing town meeting system used in many smaller towns here, the notion might be a bit foreign. In New Hampshire, town Finance Committees are appointed annually by the town moderator (again, kind of an abstruse thing for most Americans) as sort of an oversight body for the town (and school) budgeting process. We have zero authority, but our opinions (expressed in an annual report) are taken refreshingly seriously by the town and school administrations and the townspeople (voters). :) It's a New England thing.
 
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I can just imagine what your property taxes are there! :eek:
Time to move bro., I could never have afforded to retire if I'd stayed in Chicago.
But then food prices been breaking everyone's back and that's all due to fuel costs.
Mid 2018 I was buying gas for under $1.90 a gallon at the 7-11 across the street, by 2022 they had doubled to over $4 a gallon. insanity.
95% of everything we buy has to be transported at some point. :(
Funny what a global pandemic will do.
 
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