Thanks for the link. I read your early posts and some of the responses, and look forward to spending more time reading through the whole thing.
Right off the top of my head, I have a few comments (warning, this may ramble on a bit as I tend to do this off the cuff and this box won't let me edit as a go so this is just spewing out of my brain as I type):
First of all, I agree with your observations and understand completely.
I have been an audiophile since my dad gave me my first "hi-fi" system for my 6th birthday. It was a Heathkit home-built tube amp, Dual belt drive TT, and Ampex single driver speakers. I loved it - played records on it for hours at a time. I had hand-me-down classical music albums (Symphonie Fantastique, Scheherazade, and some baroque trumpet were my favorites) from my dad and my own selection of Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
I loved the hobby all through my 20's and bought and sold a lot of gear over those years. Then I got out of the hobby for a while in my 30's when family and career took precedence. I'm back in the hobby now but with a more modest, playful, and I think realistic attitude towards it.
I seek value in everything I buy. If I give myself a budget of $1000 to buy something, I want $2000 worth of performance. If I find one product that offers $2000 worth of performance for $1000 and another that offers $1800 worth of performance but only costs $300, I'll spend the $300. This is overly simplified, but basically what I'm saying is that I respect the law of diminishing returns and always seek the optimum price
erformance ratio. And it doesn't matter how much money we're talking about. Whether I'm looking at a new car or a bag of pretzels, it's all about the bang-for-the-buck. In it's most simplest terms, for me, the quest to get the most for the least has replaced the quest to get the most I can afford (if that makes sense). It's all about the challenge. If it costs me $3000 to get the most for the least, then that's what I'll spend. If it only costs $30, then that's what I'll spend.
We all have to draw our own personal line on where the price
erformance ratio dips below our comfort zone. For me, I came to the conclusion that the "top of the middle" is usually my sweet spot. It's the spot where I believe most of the technology from the high-end stuff has trickled down, yet the price is still targeted at the masses. When I was shopping for loudspeakers a couple of years ago, I fell in love with a pair of Revel Studio2 speakers I heard in a demo room. Beautiful sound, fantastic appearance/build - I was blown away. Unfortunately, they cost $16,000. I decided to try and find a pair of speakers that would make me just as happy for a lot less money. After a lot of research and visiting stores to demo speakers (which is a big part of the fun of the hobby!), I decided on the Definitive Technology Mythos ST. They don't sound quite as liquid as the Revels and aren't nearly as pretty, but they sound extremely good, are actually more flexible to set up, and were "only" $2000 for the pair. I think the Revels vs. the Def Techs have a lot in common with your Ultrasone vs. Sennheiser comparison. It certainly mirrors the LCD-2 vs. HD 600 comparison I made recently!
Because people get so passionate about their hobbies, it's no surprise that not everyone was sympathetic to your opinion. Think about all the audiophiles that have paid $300/ft for speaker wire. Do they want to undergo a DBT to see if their speakers sound better with lamp cord? No. And if they did, they would hear a difference because they are expecting (and desperately hoping) to hear a difference. Can a human being hear the difference between a 32 bit DAC and a 24 bit DAC? Some people will argue to their death that they can. Maybe they can, and if they can afford it, then it's worth thousands of dollars for them to have one. Me? I can't tell a 16/44.1 CD from a 24/192 DVD-A recording of the same album (assuming the same master). A lot of times, people are seeking something better/different simply out of boredom. When you've owned something for a while, you start to think maybe it's time for something else. Something better, or maybe just different. The media is constantly bombarding us with incentives and temptation to replace what we have. And as we all know, once you get something better, everything else in your chain needs to be upgraded too to "get the most from it." It's just insane!
I remember a few weeks ago, I was reading a forum where somebody mentioned downloading a high-rez album from HDTracks. I innocently asked a question to the effect of, "I understand the value of having a 24 bit file of a recording created in a 24 bit digital studio, but how does an analog album recorded in the 1970's sound better in 24 bit than 16 bit?" Nobody would answer. They simply called me a troll.
Personally, once I decided I didn't want or need TOTL gear and became comfortable with finding the best bang-for-the-buck, I became happy with just relaxing and enjoying my music instead of always wondering if that $1400 headphone would make the bass drum on Track 2 (Dreams) of my Fleetwood Mac Rumours CD sound a little punchier than it does with my $270 headphones.
I agree with one comment someone made on your thread that maybe you are burned out. Maybe you need to take a break from the hobby for a while. I know I've been really enjoying it since I jumped back in.
