My first interest in sound quality was not from Head-fi nor was it from the internet. One of my expensive hobbies was seeing a lot of live music and traveling to different cities to see live music. It's really great and I love it more than audio equipment because to me it's living the adventure and seeing real music and the true spirit of performances.
Anyway, I began to pay attention to the acoustics of different places like theaters, clubs, concert halls, arenas and stadiums. I became more aware of acoustics and even took up an acoustics class in music school.
Now, I am fascinated with headphones and stereo equipment and Head-fi is great for this hobby. One thing that I will remember is that it's the music that's most important, not sound quality. For me, extreme detail is not important! It's actually somewhat unrealistic in a way. It's overall balance of sound. For a music lover, it's not good to over dwell on sound quality and my goal is to get the best system that I can afford even if it's modest and then really enjoy the music and forget about my equipment. Let the spirit of the music be the focus.
After a while, like perhaps 10 years or so, it's reasonable to think about updating your equipment. But getting back on the topic, sound quality should always be secondary and the actual music appreciation should be most important. If I get bored, I will more likely buy more CDs rather than buy more equipment. To me, knowling more about music is much better than knowing more about sound quality.
