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What is it? I love reading some of the threads here, and man, some people have some excellent audio equipment, and excellent homes to go with it. Like a lot of audio enthusiasts, I want good gear, but with a budget in mind. A good friend of mine is a fully addicted audiophile, years ago, he invited me over, he wanted me to hear his latest build. It consisted of higher end Snell speakers, twin Bryston amps, Bryston preamp, California sound cd player, and a classy Thorens turntable, he also made a point to feature the cables he had recently invested in.
Well, suffice it to say, I thought it all looked impressive, and then he puts on some Creedence Clearwater Revival: I mean how are you going to make that sound any better was my thought, and well, it really didn't. Not to bash CCR, they did their thing, but he kept putting a lot of crusty older music on, and the same result. I asked him if he had any audiophile grade recordings, or some jazz/fusion and he didn't even know what that genre was.
I brought some records over on a different day, albums that sounded great on my humble ADS L810/Yamaha cr-2040. And you know what, I could tell he really didn't care much for the music, his system sounded much better to me, but selling him on it was not happening. I turns out he had over 25,000.00 into that rig(which he has since replaced). I had about 2200.00 into mine. And for the money, I was really satisfied, he on the other hand goes through new gear all the time.
So for me, it's always the music, and equipment wise, I am finding that getting hold of nice vintage gear at a reasonable price satisfies my itch to upgrade. And I even still have that Yamaha receiver on a second system.
But I will never understand why some folks go all out on the ultra highend, and listen to music that is not really audibly pristine?
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