[dale55]

As an audiophile I am constantly looking for yet another upgrade of something in the audio chain to make my music sound the best it possibly can to me and I have a phenominal sounding system, but I am curious as to what others define as their nirvana? At what point do you say enough is enough and just know you have the best and are satisfied and just listen? I know I just keep constantly looking and sometimes I just wonder if I should just stop and be content.

Thoughts?

Dale

 

[Music Alchemist]

I'm always interested in listening to new (potentially better) audio gear, but at the same time I try to be happy with what I have. In the past I had multiple five figures worth of headphones and related equipment. This year I started my journey into speakers and it's even more thrilling for me. You can experience nirvana with all sorts of systems while also acknowledging that there are much better ones waiting to be heard. Since there are systems out there that literally cost millions, I don't think it's worth fretting over whether you have "the best" you can possibly get. Just find what gives you enough enjoyment that you have no particular desire to venture further. For some, such as myself, that point may never come...but I hope it does.

 

[Hifiearspeakers]

It will happen 5 minutes after you listen to an HE1000 V1 or V2.

 

[Music Alchemist]

It will happen 5 minutes after you listen to an HE1000 V1 or V2.

Bleh. Don't like it, personally.

 

[gregorio]

[1] As an audiophile I am constantly looking for yet another upgrade of something in the audio chain to make my music sound the best it possibly can to me and I have a phenominal sounding system, [2] but I am curious as to what others define as their nirvana? At what point do you say enough is enough and just know you have the best and are satisfied and just listen?

1. The significant part of that statement is: "the best it possibly can to me". By inserting those two little words "to me", you are defining sound quality by your personal perception and as your perception naturally evolves over time and changes even over relatively short periods of time, in response to all sorts of influences and biases then "nirvana" is an ever changing target, which is only going to be perceived as "nirvana" for a certain amount of time and is not directly related to fidelity. Hence why you can never know you have the best and why you can't be satisfied for very long.

2. One solution, the solution I personally prefer is not to define "nirvana" myself. I don't rely on what sounds best "to me", I rely on what IS best and then acclimatise my hearing/perception to that, rather than trying to do it the other way around. Doing it this way around allows me to save a great deal of money in some areas, the many audiophile products which rely on biasing perception rather than actually improving audible performance, and concentrating my spending on those areas where it does make an actual performance improvement. This doesn't cure the problem entirely because there are still always some areas which can be improved but it does dramatically reduce the problem, for me at least.

G

 

[davidland]

reading story here, nice!

 

[FastAndClean]

when you buy second hand HifiMan HE500 for 300 dollars

 

[Oscar-HiFi]

when you buy second hand HifiMan HE500 for 300 dollars

+1 also got a pair for $325 I think it was, and changed the headband to the newer style Hifiman one for comfort, and installed dual 3.5mm sockets

Balanced out of the Keces S3 into the S125 power amp into the HE500, holy cow it's good!!! (even balanced straight out the Keces S3 sounds good)

They are easily still on par with a lot of the $1000 headphones out there today, including the Beyer T1, Sennheiser HD800, Focal Elear (much better than Elear IMO) and others. There is detail, impact and just amazing audio quality.

 

[FastAndClean]

They are just amazing, neutral but musical at the same time, and the mids my god the mids are spectacular

 

[Music Alchemist]

Audio is too subjective to tell someone else what their nirvana will be, so gear recommendations aren't in the spirit of this thread, in my opinion.

 

[saddleup]

When I started to buy audiophile approved recordings of music for the quality of the recording rather than the content I knew it was time to stop chasing the dragon.

 

[gregorio]

Audio is too subjective to tell someone else what their nirvana will be ...

I'm not sure I'd entirely agree with this but then I wouldn't entirely disagree with it either!

Audio reproduction is not necessarily subjective, if fidelity is the goal, then it's entirely objective. Of course, we can have a subjective opinion on whether or not we personally like high fidelity and change the reproduction if not. A fair amount of the audiophile world is based on this, either unchanged or actually degraded fidelity, marketed and/or described as "better" or closer to nirvana but defined by a subjective opinion rather than by fidelity.

G

 

[Music Alchemist]

I'm not sure I'd entirely agree with this but then I wouldn't entirely disagree with it either!

Audio reproduction is not necessarily subjective, if fidelity is the goal, then it's entirely objective. Of course, we can have a subjective opinion on whether or not we personally like high fidelity and change the reproduction if not. A fair amount of the audiophile world is based on this, either unchanged or actually degraded fidelity, marketed and/or described as "better" or closer to nirvana but defined by a subjective opinion rather than by fidelity.

G

I agree about fidelity. But nirvana, in this context, normally means a certain type of enjoyment that's determined by each person, which can be anything, including things that are certainly not high fidelity.

 

[gregorio]

I agree about fidelity. But nirvana, in this context, normally means a certain type of enjoyment that's determined by each person, which can be anything, including things that are certainly not high fidelity.

Yep, that's essentially my point. I disagree with this part of your statement: "audio is too subjective", audio is not really subjective at all but how we perceive, appreciate and judge it, is entirely subjective. Many aspects of our perception are shared by all (or most) other humans but our appreciation and judgement is far more personal and only shared by certain, often small sub-groups of people rather than by most/all others. A superlative, such as "nirvana", is even more personal and less general and as you say, can effectively be virtually anything, including being partially or even completely unrelated to fidelity. My original point was that our appreciation, judgement and even our perception itself evolves over time and can be influenced consciously (trained). So, I choose to relate/align my "nirvana" to fidelity as closely as possible, thereby eliminating a large portion of "audiophile" products and therefore eliminating a large portion of dissatisfaction or questioning of whether I have the "best".

G

 

[Music Alchemist]

Yep, that's essentially my point. I disagree with this part of your statement: "audio is too subjective", audio is not really subjective at all but how we perceive, appreciate and judge it, is entirely subjective. Many aspects of our perception are shared by all (or most) other humans but our appreciation and judgement is far more personal and only shared by certain, often small sub-groups of people rather than by most/all others. A superlative, such as "nirvana", is even more personal and less general and as you say, can effectively be virtually anything, including being partially or even completely unrelated to fidelity. My original point was that our appreciation, judgement and even our perception itself evolves over time and can be influenced consciously (trained). So, I choose to relate/align my "nirvana" to fidelity as closely as possible, thereby eliminating a large portion of "audiophile" products and therefore eliminating a large portion of dissatisfaction or questioning of whether I have the "best".

G

When I said audio, I meant the audio(phile) hobby rather than audio in an objective sense, so we're on the same page here. hehe