Can an “audiophile” ever be satisfied with a system?

The thrill of expecting something new is great. Not to mention receiving something “bright and shinny”.
Chuck, you have gone to incredible lengths to tweak your system. Even inventing things!
Wish I could bring myself to pay $199+ for Better-records White Hot Stampers. Good recordings are the “final frontier”.

I answered my own question.
It is distracting and misleading to listen to a lot of old, so so LPs.
But when I put on those relatively few good recordings THEN I HEAR THE FULL POTENTIAL. And I do have quite a few of those.
The ones I really like, I play twice or more. BUT, I still hesitate to spend $600+ on three records from Better-Records thinking of my $15 good sounding ones. I have had about 50% luck with 180 gram reissues. I did try 2 Hot Stampers and was not impressed enough to keep them. One, a Super Hot for $99, I could not listen to side 2! Sure, a lot of it depends on liking the music.
The other bottom line is “good enough is good enough”.
But in upgrading there is a real effort to upgrade the sound. It is not merely “shopaholic”. I always think that I love the sound until I do even a small upgrade. With Covid I am listening to my system much more than ever. And because we are now not traveling, I am more inclined to buy.I do listen to digital when I watch Amazon and Netflix at night.
Then it is great but intellectual. But the TT rig is emotional.
“Wow, it sounds great” compared to “wow, I am speechless”.

The Forum has been a real eye opener to many issues around my system and hobby. I never thought a I would not miss my SET before I moved to Atma-Sphere. And now I have a global view on my LP content.
For years, I winnowed down my large CD collection to about 100 that I always enjoy. I have them in three folders next to my office headphone system and love to listen when I am doing biz. I do listen to several over and over.
I've only fairly recently gotten serious about vinyl. I actually have already started sorting out the best LPs. It looks like I will do the same as my CDs with my hundreds of LPs.
Like I have said, when it comes to being satisfied with my system it is really all about 1. Content 2. Content and 3. Content.
Content for contentment!

I get to a point where the feeling is “how can it be any better?” and “good enough is good enough!”.
Then I make an improvement like changing out a couple of tubes in the phono stage of my preamp for $25 NOS... the improvement is marked and significant. More detail. more presence! Now I am waiting for a SRA platform for my TT. According to my latest audio guru, Ralph Karsten, this is a very significant improvement. And following his lead, will soon have a Triplanar arm replacing my Ortophon RS 309D arm. I expect that this will be a huge change.
A $3500 arm for a $7500 one. At least, I will love to look at it and love picking it up and placing it in the run in grove! Is there an element of hearing an expected outcome? Sure. But IME, leaping up to the next level of sound reproduction is real and exciting. And sure, the rush of something new fades. But the enjoyment of hearing more deeply into the music remains.