This is the same as satisfaction. When you get to this level, it is what people call “god level”! Because you just don’t care, and is totally enjoying what you have without even blinking into other possibilities or what others may think and so on. Seriously speaking, and that is why satisfaction is priceless.
And this is what we call the zone of diminishing return points after this Awe experience...To reach that i think this is possible around 1000... But if someone want
the absolute best and the absolute top level audiophile experience i dont think that this is possible under 100,000 dollars...Like you said, i must pay for some advanced technology for sure,if i want the absolute best in a technical sense.... But i have not written the question of this thread for very rich people,they dont need to come here for suggestions, but for the newcomers like i was 7 years ago, sad, because not able to afford what it seems necessary, to me at this time, to live an awe audio experience....I was thinking to upgrade all along, each and every months passing by frustration rage....
And now i dont have any envious and urging desire to upgrade at all costs,no more.... Music is music when you have it at the end, musical timbre, a soundstage, a depth imaging, a relatively beautiful, organic, flowing sound...And i have it finally,it is possible around 1000 yes....For that i have read a lot and experiment a lot with very simple methods in the last years...In fact it was a search without end, but at low money costs, even after satisfaction obtained, i have fun to imagine way to improve with very simple things...It worked great for me and made little miracles for the last year...
Some weeks ago i read a post and a review about very costly dacs, i purchase the cds the guy use to compare many costly dacs,by curiosity, and desire to compare written impressions with my owns, guess what : with my own NOS dac,
in my completely cleaned and treated system, from the electrical panel to the headphones, i discover that with the same music, with a dac that cost me 100 bucks,
it seems that i experience
near and almost , subjectively speaking for sure, the same approx. level of
described details than with the more costlier dacs there is in this review( for example the perceived location of singers, the details of percussions etc )....The reviewer was very, very detailed in his comparison between one and each cd... I will not name these dacs that i had never listen to begins with... This is not my goal to bash anything here, only to give hope... And DONT read my words like i pretend that my dac EQUAL the totl one,
for sure not, but it was too close,or
seems so,my listening impressions compared with the written details of the review, too close in performance to justify to me, after that reading and listening, the extraordinary price for an upgrade...
The conclusion is, without much money, with some rightly choosen product to begin with, and with only some few measures to implement cleaning and damping process, at low cost,yes it is possible to transform a very good product in a subjective way,in an ALMOST relatively totl one, or at least, not too distant of the totl one ...After all music when it is perceived, is music, it is all that count...There is always, and there will be always a better product...BUT satisfaction is possible,with a good product rightly implemented in the audio system of your house, this is all i want to say, nothing more,nothing less...
And sometimes a good product rivals a better one,because of the difference there is in the process of implementation in a particular environment...
For sure i dont pretend that my dac equal a many thousand dollars one, only that for myself the subjective listening result were so convincing that the desire to upgrade was nil...Diminishing returns zone was reached for me...
Satisfaction of your reptilian brain with the music is the key to Audio Awe...Not money...
BUT dont think for a minute that my dac had a sound, right out of the box like now ,after all my implementation measures to reach this actual optimal level; as good as it is, without the cleaning measures and damping measures implemented in all my audio system, and even in my house,not only in my audio room, no way and no comparison possible.... I know now that simply buying a new product without any other action of ourself, is no warrenty of satisfaction, and no warrenty of the peak performance of ANY product, even the TOTL one...To drive a product to his peak level performance some measures and thinking are necessary...It is the same for my speakers and headphone, no comparison between their sound right of the box and after treatment....Particularly the headphone i love the most, the AKG K340, that is so sensible to all links downstream from the central electrical panel to it ; it takes me real work to treat it and the audio links before it ,now the sound is way superior to my 2 stax,my hifiman he-400, and to my beyer dt-150,which i listen to no more, then a totl true headphone,but not so good , right out of the box...
I will repeat myself here to conclude :
«..Almost all people here and there are not conscious that an audio product is not ready, and is not at his optimal functionning regime right out of the box, but need to be installed and prepared,
in an audio environment first (synergy with other gears,room treatment,cups treatment for headphones is often necessary, cable and interconnect treatment,etc), secondly
in an electro-magnetic atmosphere, where the products and the electrical grid of the house need to be cleaned by some filtering methods, and last but not least
in a physical location where the products need to be treated to be better damped and for better absorbtion and dissipation of vibrations to prevent and control at some level the generalized mechanically and electro-magnetically induced negative resonance that is a pervasive noise in all links and between them .»
