Oh yes, definitely aware of the craziness, and been hanging around here long enough to have dabbled. Just found for me that diminishing returns kicked in real hard and personally I have just pivoted to struggling to find value in a lot of the more expensive stuff. I know there are differences to be had, I just have lost the desire to spend that money to chase what often amounts to pretty small changes. Just isnt for me. Still want to hear a lot of that stuff and even considered jumping on some tours, but I would rather not even tempt myself and will likely be focusing on more value type purchases that offer something unique. Seemingly like the fatfreq maestro mini I just bought.
As I said though, always interesting to see whats releasing and see all you guys sharing impressions of your new toys.
I’m trying to be this way. I emphasize “trying”, lol!
This year for me the goal was to be a minimalist, and build one, complete, versatile, TOTL setup, and I accomplished that for myself over about six months: Cayin N8ii, Oriolus Traillii, PW Audio Orpheus. Done. And extremely happy! Still very happy, not selling anything.
Then I started hanging here, lol!
Seriously, goal is still to not sell anything (I just don’t like the used market, shipping, packaging blah blah blah back and forth, but that’s just my issue), and eventually land on 3 (okay, maybe 4) TOTL IEMs that would provide just enough sound flavor profiles to be different enough to rotate them and be solidly happy with whatever I grabbed depending on mood/use case. Still the end goal, the challenge is there’s just so much good stuff out there.
Thinking about this, I think the industry has reached an inflection point where there really is an abundance of amazing sounding gear that we can choose from. Even five, six years ago I’d say it was easier to point to a few brands/IEMs that stood out as justified summit tier level, separated by the rest of the field. Now, I think that’s just harder to do, there’s a lot of killer stuff to listen to and consider.
Great for us! Harder to be a minimalist. Also makes me hopeful that there’s some designer out there tinkering, designing something truly next level, and shatters this paradigm again with “something” that’s truly taking the industry to even greater heights.
It’s a GREAT time to be a portable audiophile fan, despite the damage it does to our wallets.