Please help with "Upgradeitis"!

Financially unwise. Most likely you will love it and want more, which equals more expenditures., 

Or you may decide it's not worth the money, sell the stuff off at a minimal loss and be content with what you have. Unlikely, but possible.

 

The only cure of upgradeitis is to buy the best, then there is no upgrading, you just make lateral moves to different gear, either way your wallet gets raped.

 

Welcome to headfi, sorry about your wallet. :)

 

 

It's human nature to always want more.  I started out gawking at the idea of paying more than $50 for IEMs, now I'm looking at the JH16 lol.  

It's not smart, it will be one of the worst decisions you could make, time- and money-wise. 

I have a JH13 and some days I still wonder about the JH16. 

 

You want a cure? Flee.

I'm in the same boat with you, a college student longing for an upgrade since I found this site.

You can:
1. Buy the best equipments so you won't have to upgrade anymore or
2. Buy decent equipments that you can afford and be grateful with what you have or
3. Stay out of equipments forum

Personally I'm going with option #2. I've decided that my last purchases will be a headphone and an amp. After I purchased them, I'm going to stay out of here at least until I have my own income.

The 'end of the road' for upgraditis is very far away. You'll need to spend at least $2000 / 3000 in order to get into 'high-end' territory. Only then will the feeling stop. One way is to reduce your knowledge of what is 'the best' - don't go listen to Stax headphones or whatever. Ignorance is bliss...

 

Go and listen to more music. Enjoy building up a collection of that so that when you have the disposable income you can have a huge library to re-listen to through your new headphones.

Ugh...it's not a cheap thing if that's what youre really..IMO if your strapped for cash just buy something mid range and try to be happy with it until you can fund your audio desires, if you do choose to go past mid range stuff.

 

 

It's not "smart".

It's not coming from the thinking part of your brain.

 

It's emotional; and easily manipulated.

 

 

Advice I've learned from my own experiences and from those much smarter than I:

 

Don't spend beyond your means.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yeah, where I'm at right now (check my profile) I don't even want to upgrade anymore so much as get different gear because... I don't know?

 

This compulsion never really goes away.

 

*Edit*

 

Oh, one thing I can advise you on: don't get into the high end DAP market. I can't really think of my Hisound or my HM-601 as anything other than wastes of money and my HM-801 will probably get sold at some point because my iPod coupled with the HP-P1 is just so much better.

Edited by driver 8 - 2/15/12 at 10:01pm

Honestly I would start a lot smaller. If you want something great there are lots of fantastic headphones in the $200-$400 range that will keep you way below $1000 even with the amp. But I can see the appeal of jumping straight to the highest point you can, to try to mitiigate the desire to upgrade more, but it will be there anyway.

its so hard to cure the upgradeitis, and right now i'm stuck in the mid-fi with my WA6-SE and WA2, and i just wanna finally make the jump to the high end and buy HD 800s and maybe a WA5 or something lol. but i can't 

 

and a couple months back, i had a cheap 200 dollar headphone amp and hd 650s, and i thought i was done with that. and before that, i had some cheap bose on-ears lol and i thought those where audiophile quality. LOL

How to cure upgraditis:

 

- Low-fiers: Don't audition anything so you won't have the itch to upgrade.

 

- Mid-fiers: Audition all the headphones available and realise that the improvements aren't major between mid -> high end cans.

 

- High-fiers: When it comes to high end cans, the only difference is sound signature. Everything's technically superior.

 

If all of the written suggestions do not work, distance yourself from Head-Fi (which is what your wallet wants you to do). 

I generally agree.  Very good cans can be had for less than $100, especially if you do some shopping.  From about $130 to $250 street you can enter audiophile turf.  Going much above that price range the differences between quality products begins to become small to marginal, as well as subject to personal taste.  Still worth it for some, but not everyone. 

 

In any case you are limited by the source of your system being fed into the phones.  Don't buy beyond that unless you plan to upgrade the whole shabang in near future.

 

 

I agree with LilBuck.  You can spend well under $1000 and still get something that sounds really great.

 

For example, lightly used HD650's go for $300-350.

 

A Bottlehead Crack kit goes for $279, speedball upgrade for another $99.  Assembly required, but used assembled ones show up periodically for $300-350, or even less.

 

For $600-700 you get cans that scale up really well with better amplification and an amp that punches well above its weight and allows you the ability to tube swap.  That's what I'm listening to now and it's wonderful.  Picked up a couple of new tubes last week and tonight I'm tube swapping for fun.

 

I was at the Bay Area meet this past weekend and heard a bunch of awesome cans and amps and yeah, they're better.  But it didn't really make me want to go out and upgrade.  I feel like I'm 80-85% of the way there with what I have and there are a lot of other things to spend $ on besides headphones and amps.

 

If music is really your thing, there's also full size speakers to explore.  You can have a $600-700 headphone setup and instead of spending $1-2K on getting to the next tier, you can start building a nice loudspeaker setup that you can enjoy when you want to be doing other things than sitting in once place listening to music.

 

Just have fun with it and don't let it become an "obsession".  If you have to strain or concentrate to hear your latest upgrade. . .just make sure you're having fun while you're doing that and not having buyer's regret at spending more than you want to or can afford to.

 

 

 

 

Shiii... I've got it bad, been spending way too much on new cans and amps, maybe $1500 in the last 2 months. I've spent more on hi-fi gear in my life, much, much more, but for some reason this seems less "acceptable". Maybe it's because with hi-fi gear you've usually got cool massive monitors, shiny pre-pros, and big heavy amps. In head-fi it's a much smaller physical scale, and even though it is comparatively less expensive, it still isn't cheap if you want great quality.