[FastAndClean]

You are reading this right, it's an addiction, I find out that no matter how happy I am with my headphones I always go to a site for second hand headphones and watch what new is there. If there's something new and good I am starting to consider buying it, every day. That's not normal and I am sure that there is a lot of people like me here. I just don't know how to stop this. There is no "end game" and that's a curse.

 

[endgame]

How long have you been at this hobby? Just curious.

 

[bigshot]

I don't have that problem myself. I tend to not compromise when I buy audio equipment. I save up and buy stuff that I can live with. I don't make incremental upgrades. I spend my money on music.

 

[richard51]

By vintage, buy the TOTL of the past, learn to make some simple mods to augment the quality at the end, like eliminating vibrations and EMI, and like me with a system that cost me peanuts at the end you will smile at guy that spend many ,many thousand dollars without being envious a second, because you will know that your system is the best that few bucks can buy, law of diminishing returns is more important than Moses Law in audio....

Mission cyrus 781 speakers 50 bucks, sansui au-7700 150 bucks, mini battery dac tda 1543, 20 bucks on ebay , akg k 340, 200 bucks,and trust me all that are TOTL gear ,more bucks tough for cable, sorbothane, stones etc for modding all that and now i am not envious of no one because of the quality of sound, when you have it at the end,music is music, the rest are unimportant details....It is better tu use your brain cells than to obey obsession, inform yourself and study and read about audio, concentrate on this goal : how to pay the least to have the better ? Transform your obsession to spend money in an obsession to learn....You will spend less and less to buy more and more quality, because being informed you will begin to know and discern....For example in the last seven years i read a lot and now i know why i cannot beat none of the piece of gear i already have in an upgrading with low amount of money, then it is futile to buy the last hype product: for example i KNOW that no headphone south of 1000 thousand bucks can beat my AKG k 340 because i inform myself about that....At the end now it is impossible to beat my system south of an amount of money so big that i dont have it and because i am satisfied with the music of my actual system i dont want to take the risk to invest in a new product....

 

[71 dB]

I spend my money on music.

Same here. I use "bang for the buck" headphones (Senn. HD 598) and just enjoy the music, properly cross-fed by my DIY headphone adapter. I don't even think about how better phones would sound. I am familiar with the sound of my phones. Seaching for better and better sound has no end, so I have ended it myself and such self-control is good in life. It's capitalism out there and it's taking advantage of audiophools. You can take advantage of capitalism (in the form of bang for the buck products) if you are smart.

Music is another story… …that's where my self-control fails miserably…

 

[Strangelove424]

"End game" is state of mind. This is a psychological problem, not a practical one.

 

[JaeYoon]

A good post by @amirm
My question is, how do people judge headphones by something that sounds better. We have no standard scale on what "sounds better" besides measurements. There is another smokescreen on reasons why different headphones sound different to others.

but there isn't an consistency in production in music, we don't even know how to match it how it sounded in studio. Everything is just a wild imagination goose chase after something that just doesn't exist.
The people here who are happy with what they got, are incredibly smart. Because they know it's almost impossible to get it to sound exactly as it's recorded without any sort of specification or standardization.

 

[richard51]

The possibility that something sound better is not an absolute fact, but a relative one, linked to your own educated ears and brain.... You must study, read and inform yourself, the better amplifier possible for you or headphone, will not descend from heaven with his price tag, given by the celestial wind of the "hype"....

The scale by which you decide something is better came from your own experience and experiments, you build yourself that scale... For measurement this is engineer affair not a musical one and no measurement say if something will be beautiful music and not ugly sound beside your own ears and experiment, controlling yourself the conditions of your listening experience : room treatment, damping methods, simple modifications,synergetic pairing of gear,etc

And dont be afraid, the more you learn to listen to music, the more you know where you go and want to go with your system...READING and THINKING....there is no other solution... If you can, go to audio meeting, i cannot...

 

[bigshot]

It's interesting that the same sort of arguments about different players being different doesn't exist in video. You don't see home theater folks saying that a $100 blu-ray has better image and sound quality than an Oppo. They have a very rational approach to it. They know that they're paying for features. I think the idea that more money buys you quality is part and parcel of audiophile thinking. Something cheap can't be good. But that's a lie.

 

[richard51]

It's interesting that the same sort of arguments about different players being different doesn't exist in video. You don't see home theater folks saying that a $100 blu-ray has better image and sound quality than an Oppo. They have a very rational approach to it. They know that they're paying for features. I think the idea that more money buys you quality is part and parcel of audiophile thinking. Something cheap can't be good. But that's a lie.

The interpretation of the sound by the ears and the brain has nothing in common with image and colors, and MUSIC is not sound in the physical engineering sense of the word, then any comparison between the 2 business is not very instructive...evidently price has no linear correlation with quality,more so if you buy used or vintage....

 

[bigshot]

Well my blu-ray player is a lot better than my old VHS players and my laserdisc!

 

[JaeYoon]

It's interesting that the same sort of arguments about different players being different doesn't exist in video. You don't see home theater folks saying that a $100 blu-ray has better image and sound quality than an Oppo. They have a very rational approach to it. They know that they're paying for features. I think the idea that more money buys you quality is part and parcel of audiophile thinking. Something cheap can't be good. But that's a lie.

Here's a anonymous screenshot I took from a thread in other places.

Apparently it's part of some people's mindsets unfortunately where they believe if you spend big bucks, you get what you pay.

and as @richard51 mentioned and you and many others can spend a small budget on some audio equipment and still get great results!
"It's almost double the price!" Yes, yes that's very nice and all. Ironically that person has the $1,100 dap Sony W1MA in their signature. haha.
Well of course they must defend it!!!

 

[jmills8]

People just want to keep getting high. The high of buying, the high of a new sound, the high of selling inorder to buy again.

 

[richard51]

You are right...But me i dont give a damn except for the high of music

 

[jmills8]

You are right...But me i dont give a damn except for the high of music

Then you are set and wont buy anymore audio gear because you have music to get you high. You can go buy more music.