The other day I was reading a thread on the Audiogon Forums entitled, I find myself “tuning out”…..is the magic fading? Typically, I spend very little time on these forums, but I get an email every evening with the “Top New Discussions of the day” and occasionally I click on one that catches my attention.

This was a discussion I could relate to. I can remember a time for me when the “magic” of audio had faded. And as far as this industry is concerned, I’d say I began “tuning out” a long time ago.

The OP coralkong writes:

I think I might have hit a plateau in my audiophile/hi-fi journey.

I’m not saying that I don’t enjoy listening to my system and music, I certainly do.

However, (and not trying to turn this into a b*tch session), I am REALLY tired of a lot of things that go along with this hobby.

It dawned on me when I received (unsolicited, mind you) a copy of Stereophile and a MusicDirect catalog the other day in the mail.

I can’t find a single thing in either magazine that I actually want. Nothing. Even the pretty ad pictures just don’t do it for me.

I used to subscribe to several YouTube audio influencer channels. I can’t hardly sit through any of them anymore without grimacing. Everything is the “latest/greatest/gotta have it” product. Not only do I just not really trust you any more, but I find myself simply not interested in what you are peddling. 

How many different speakers are you going to audition? Jeez…..buy a set and enjoy them. They can’t ALL be the (best) speakers you’ve ever heard.

Even on here, I find discussions of whether or not some tweak works or doesn’t work (cables/fuses/magic rocks, whatever….) to be boring and not worth the time to respond. They might work for you, might not work, I don’t care.

Any discussions using the term “Snake Oil” will be summarily dismissed from any future consideration of thought.

Which DAC is the best? How come I still listen to CDs when you can rip all your music to a HD? You NEED a turntable! Your amp is old and sucks. Buy some new speaker cables. Double blind test your interconnects and you’ll see…. The Pink Panther brigade says if I measure it, it must be true. (Your ears be d*mned!) You NEED to do this/that or the other thing….because I said so.

Maybe some day I’ll get the “upgrade-itis” bug again, but at this point, I’m just not interested. Jaded might be a good word, I don’t know….burnt out? Overload?

Anyway, rant over. Was just wondering if anyone else ever got to this point.

Most of the time, these threads are fairly benign. And brief. What struck me about this one was that it went on a while. And then a while longer. Clearly it had spoken to a fair number of other audiophiles. It seemed that coralkong was not the only one out there struggling to make sense of this nutty hobby.

As I read through the posts, some common themes emerged. The most common being that, at some point, the “bliss” the audiophile feels after buying a new piece of equipment and “upgrading” their system inevitably fades, leaving them “jaded,” “burnt out” and finding that this audio thing can really “start to get old.”

For me, this thread started to get a bit old. I was growing a little tired of reading by the time I reached the next to the last post, this one from jimmyblues1959:

After 50 years in this hobby I have experienced this jaded aspect of chasing audio gear many times. However, I think that you can apply this to anything in life. People eventually get bored of repetition. With audio the chase for the Holy Grail of audio systems begins in earnest, however, once we realize that there is no such thing, we tend to become jaded towards what is otherwise a very enjoyable hobby.

The same can be true of listening to music daily. Sometimes it’s nice to step away for a bit, which tends to rejuvenate your senses and allow you to start fresh.

The older I get as my hearing ages, the more I focus on simply enjoying the music itself, rather than attempting to intensely listen to the sounds that my hifi system makes.

Of course this is just my personal opinion and should be taken with a grain of sand.

If you take the substantial time needed to read through this thread, you’ll no doubt see that jimmyblues‘ advice mirrors that of the many other audiophiles who empathized with coralkong. Advice such as “don’t feel bad if you want to stop chasing the ‘holy grail of audio systems” or “take some time away from your system and focus on what’s more important,” and, of course, “just stop worrying and enjoy the music!”

I agree with jimmyblues that this feeling of becoming “jaded” after acquiring something we’ve been chasing is not just an audio problem, but a life problem. At some point, after any of us has reached a goal or acquired a coveted object, we find ourselves asking the question – is that all there is?

As audiophiles, I’m not sure I agree that we sometimes need to “step away” from listening to music to address this. Maybe. Personally I find that listening to music, particularly on a good system, can be a nice “step away” from the things in our life – work, family, media, that can leave us feeling burned out.

But one thing jimmyblues says I wholeheartedly disagree with. There is such a thing as a “Holy Grail” system. And not only is such a system attainable, but when done right, the process of building it can be so fun and satisfying, we never get bored or “burnt out” doing it.

Now, when I say “Holy Grail system”, I don’t necessarily mean what I believe most other audiophiles mean. What I’m talking about here is not the system that many audiophiles covet, because that type of system is driven by the coveting, and the building of that type of system is so often fueled by fetishizing the equipment, rather than hearing clearly what that equipment actually brings to the table in the way of good sound.

What I’m talking about is more what I’d call a “truly great system.” What makes a stereo “truly great”? It is that very special and elusive ability to bring a recording to life in a truly convincing and fulfilling way. A great stereo reproducing a great recording makes us feel something that is the polar opposite of “jaded” or “burnt out.” Such a system, playing the right record, brings us only joy and satisfaction.

Such a system is not built with money, or at least, not only with money. Sure, you need to spend some to build it, quite a bit of it in fact. But with such a system, every dollar you spend gives you a return in sound quality that, if not outsized, is at least commensurate with cost.

This means that when building a “truly great” system, you no longer have the issue of diminishing returns, the whole notion of which is tied to the fact that so much audio equipment is so very expensive, and so little of it actually delivers in the way of great sound.

This is because much of the audio equipment on the market these days cannot actually be used to build a “truly great” system. Particularly the most expensive equipment on the market.

Now, if that sounds a little crazy, I would have to agree. It is crazy that so much of the stuff that comes out is so ridiculously expensive and still doesn’t sound all that good, but then again neither does most of the mid-priced stuff, or the cheap stuff for that matter.

The fact is, most of the gear on the market is problematic for one very important reason – it’s made for building stereos that try to get good sound from substandard source material. In the analog world, this means most, maybe even all of the new records coming out these days.

Before I move forward here, let me pose a question. What music do you mostly listen to?

Your answer to that question will have a lot to do with whether you’ll agree or disagree, or even give a rat’s ass about anything I’m saying here. Because if your answer falls anywhere near the category of contemporary popular music, then you needn’t pay any attention at all to anything I’m saying here, or to anything I say anywhere on this site for that matter.

Not that I’m bashing contemporary popular music. Not at all. But this site is devoted to analog audio, and not just any analog audio, but analog audio at an extremely high level of playback.

But wait a minute! I have a turntable. I listen to records. Isn’t that analog?

In a way, yes. But if the records you spend your time listening to feature music recorded and released in the last few years, or even the last few decades, then you have very likely never heard a great recording mastered wonderfully on vinyl. Modern recordings just don’t have the magic that those from the golden age of analog often have by the truckload.

But wait another minute! I buy the latest audiophile reissued pressings of some of the greatest recordings ever made. Aren’t I hearing great recordings that are, as you put it, mastered wonderfully?

Well, you’re getting warmer. But I would argue, as I have repeatedly on this site, that precious few of these audiophile reissues are any good, and almost none of them can hold a candle to the best of their vintage counterparts.

Well, I only buy original pressings, so I’m all about vintage and great sound.

To which I’d say, you likely have a lot of very good sounding records in your collection, and probably just as many not so good ones. Original pressings are often the ones to get for a given title, but not always. And not every original pressing is as good as every other.

Anyway, we’re getting a little sidetracked here, so let me just make my point.

To build a truly great stereo, you need to have records made from truly great recordings on them that are extremely well mastered and pressed. In other words, you need the right records.

Once you have the right records to play, then you can start building your system to bring out all of that greatness. And if you have success doing that, you will never get bored or jaded in this hobby. In fact, you will find your way off the hamster wheel of upgrading and never get back on it again.

There’s a better way to do analog. Let’s stop buying records, reissues or otherwise, with today’s modern mastering and expecting them to lavish us with the sound of live music. It ain’t gonna happen.

We can spend our way into bankruptcy trying to find the equipment that will bring these records to life and maybe manage to get some of these records to sound pretty good, but they will never convince us that the performers are living and breathing, right there in front of us.

And if you ask me, that is the standard we analog audiophiles should be setting for ourselves, lest we end up feeling jaded and burned out by this hobby.

Getting the right records is the key to building a truly great system, what I would call a true “Holy Grail” system. From there, we simply buy what equipment we need and do what’s necessary with it to show us what these records have to offer.

My fellow audiophiles, if you’re feeling a little sick of the B.S. in this hobby, and in this industry, I’m here to tell you, there is a cure for what ails you.

Get the right records, and then get to work on building a truly great system to play them.