Your top 10 mistakes in this hobby?

yeah thats the problem with a subjective hobby. there's no clear right or wrong and that's something we need more in our lives.

Thanks Welly for the advice...

I happen to like XM, especially the dance channels and CNN HLN (all the REAL news you need every 20 minutes...), regardless of sound quality.
I think SACDs are okay...never owned any DVD audio...
Cannot comment on cables and such...
The online discussion has been keeping me up though...it is 7 AM and I was doing the same thing since 7 AM yesterday...took a break here and there, and have been going back and forth on YAHOO! Reversi (board game), e-bay and here. At least today being Sunday, I HAVE to go to church.
I have maxed out at 5,000 CDs so, I have FAR more music than equipment...
I only buy PCDPs and ONLY SONY Discman...and I don't plan on selling ANY, any time soon. Also, as you can see from my collections...I put my money else where...not to mention savings...

Do I have any regrets? No, if I had any, it wouldn't be a hobby anymore...

Sorry about your regrets and sorry about my wallet...at least until I get my hands on the elusive D-555, D-515 and D-J5/50...

When I got into Hi-Fi a very good friend of mine who is an Italian professor at UCI told me not to make this mistake. Thank God I listened to him and thank God for good friends like that.

welly wu>so what are you trying to say exactly? that the things you were enthusiastic about are making you feel let down and now you completely down a u-turn?

loadsa of people have made mistakes and stuff. i am sure i have made more than you. you seem the sensitive type. don;t let it get you down.

well i don;t see whyn you are upset about the sacd dvd-a situation as many people still buy teh emm labs and dcs;s etc and that doesn;t seem to put them off.

i remember buying the nordost valhalla back a while go. cos i don;t have a good ear i couldn;t hardly tell the difference between spm reference and the valhalla. i think the spm ref. are a little brighter but that all i could hear.

bought a dcs seperates system. found it complicated to use and found i spent more time playing with the different options to see what the differences were with music rahter than listening to the music. so i now make it a point to avoid things which give you the option to change the sound on so many levels.

buying an ipod finding i am so lazy i prefer convienience music playbacked via ipod than using my cdp;s more than i should.

i use to do that chasing the ic/power thing. for the kind of money i spent i could of bought a few he90;s,

sold my 2 ch setup a while back thinking i wouldn;t want one again. now i want it more than ever.

sold my 5.1 ht stuff. thinking i wouldn;t want one again. now i want one again

the list is endless. i think for me you should of said top 100 mistakes

HP1 > HP2. Switches, FTW!

Best,

-Jason

I have to disagree with you on this.If you cannot hear the difference then maybe you are one of the blessed.No more expensive cables .

For me it is definetly without a doubt a noticable change in the way music is presented.The flavor 2 had a good bass kick and fast tempo to it while the enigma audio cable brings more soundstage.I switch them between my dac and amp all the time and i can hear a big change.

Upon reading your post more further i can see that you have some very good and valid point's.Thank's for sharing that...i agree with the vast majority of what is said.

Cables do make a difference, some more then others. I do not like the Cardas stuff and find it overpriced. You can always make your own and that’s what I did.

Power conditioning does work but I'd much rather have a quality extension block with maybe some passive parallel filtering over these massive transformers. Quality wire and connectors is all that's needed

I have modded a bunch of my stuff with better wire, caps, resistors and connectors. It does work but some of the modders out there do not know what they are doing and can make things worse.

The audiophile press is good for one thing only, telling us about new exciting gear but I don't really care what they have to say about it. It is much better to get feedback from owners that have lived with a piece of gear for an extended time and tried to build a system around it.

Your Golden Ref. ICs are probably overkill for your setup. It's almost the same price than your amp. Don't spend more than 20% of your total setup into cables, you're wasting money otherwise IMO.

Myself i made only one major mistake. It's was back in 1987 when i spent $3,550 for some MIT MH750 and MI330 "shotgun terminator" or something just to realise a few months later that some newly imported Cardas cables (something like today Quadlink) was trouncing them for $500.

Yeah, i have to say i've been very lucky to have one of the best high-end audio shop in Paris as mentor...

One thing I have found is that your audio memory is extremely short. Trying to remember exactly what a setup sounded like even 30 minutes ago is a challenge. Any longer and I honestly believe you have no real basis for comparison. With considerable experience you can tell if something is not right though. When I was first putting my system together I was using cheap cables and I had issues with the bottom end. Room changes helped and a cabling change made for a very pleasing setup.

With speakers I find that the room arrangement has a far greater impact than people realize. My wife and I have lively discussions where I want the room arranged for acoustics and she wants the most esthetic.

I have also found that the the subtle differences in gear are extremely hard to describe in writing. Many reviewers write as if the sound of one cable is like eating an orange and the other an apple. Terms like "night and day" and "x blows Y out of the water" really have no place in a review. In fact when I read such glaring genaralities I immediately start to discount anything the author has to say or start looking for his motives.

There is without question significant differences between the typical Best Buy home setup and a really well thought out synergistic system. I also believe that there is more to component synergy than people realize. A well matched relatively inexpensive system can often times sound better than an expensive collection of incompatable components.

PM me with a list of your dvd-audio / sacd. I'm interested in buying a lot of this stuff (pretty much anything but what I have, and classical music. Good stuff..) BTW, you do know that you can rip dvd-audio into your computer? (It does take a long time though, pm me if you want more info on that too.) BTW, I've also been searching for a decently priced SACD/DVD-AUDIO source, so you may be able to unload quite a bit of stuff off to me and not regret buying it.

Let's see what my experiences has taught me....

Top mistakes I've made (not listed in order of severity):

1) Buying based on the numbers of stars the equipment received in a magazine review.

2) Not planning enough for future upgrades when purchasing a current equipment.

3) Not taking enough time to do throughout auditions before purchasing an equipment.

4) Telling my mom how much I actually spent on a piece of gear.

5) Purchasing too much redundant gears. (md player, ipod mini, second ipod mini, etc.)

6) Not spending enough time to find out new music.

7) Not spending more time actually enjoying music rather than reading and drooling about equipments.

8) Lending my clumsy cousin my expensive gears and CDs. May they rest in peace in Hi-Fi heaven.

9) Not having enough fiscal discipline in sticking to the budget.

10) Getting sucked into this hobby!

I really don't want to start a debate, or even really discuss this, but I would guess that 50% of head-fi members pirate every ounce of their music, and the other 50% buy just about every disc. It's really odd actually how one person may pirate, and the next may not, but that's not apropriate discussion I guess. I would say FLAC/lossless format was a good and bad thing, it definitley removed for the end consumer who had the option to pirate anything the main reason they would buy the cd (for the sound quality of course.) Still, I like my real cd's, I take honor in the fact they are pressed from factories, and that I have a real cd case to go with it.

1. taking the advice of you bastards.