For those of you who had spent over hundred thousand dollars for your sound system.

@meiatflask 

Hats off to you!

@z32kerber 

Thanks for posting your system. While I had to look up a couple of the components. It looks carefully chosen and sounds like it works well together. Careful choices of components can assemble really great systems for modest prices. Congradulations!

I absolutely could not have gotten better sound for the money. My current system began in 1972 with the purchase of a Marantz integrated amp and slowly step by step progressed to be better and better with better components. I spent thousands of hours of learning and changing requirements as I better understood sound and my values. Over the time I better appreciate finer details and nuances of music reproduction.

I think you could take my system to any of the elite high end stores in the country and it would be among the best. While a high end Wilson system would be more strongly holographic… a Magico system would have better details and slam… and… etc. So, some would prefer others. Mine is tremendously natural, musical, detailed, with a great soundstage width, depth, and imaging. Really listenable and refined.

Anyway, with fifty years of building… I can’t think of how you could more cost effectively build a system.

I have loved my system (over the last 50 years) when it was valued at $10K, $20K, $40K, $60K, and now around $150K. Each step was a joy to achieve. It was always incredibly gratifying. I think probably only 10 people have heard my system in the last twenty or thirty years. It is incredibly gratifying to me. Which has always been the only point.  

@z32kerber 

It is great that you love your system. That is what is really important. Looks like you have a great one. Could you post some more photographs… the photo you posted looks great… but it is hard to see the components and venue. Looks great from what is visible!

@inna 

To extend the OP’s comments. We would love to see your virtual system… sounds like a great one. Hard to appreciate unless we can see the components in its venue. Thanks.

$14K for a refrigerator.. crazy. $14K interconnects… well  chosen: a great investment.

@larry5729 

How we get by the wife acceptance factor? Simple I buy her a really extravagant present. Then wait a few days and announce I am buying something. Then no problem.

@liquidsound

My condolences! Wow, that has got to be rough… you only live once.

I have been lucky. My significant other (of 36 years), likes to heckle me about my audio addiction.. but she also recognizes that on average I worked 70+ hours a week over the last 30+ years and taken care of her (she is diabled)… so, she really lets me do what I want (as long as she gets a new component for her home theater before I get a new component, of course).

@serjio

What a different experience I have had. Now retired, one of the most rewarding pursuits I have had. Now that I have time to spend three or more hours a day it is so listening to music, incredibly rewarding and enjoyable. Certainly the best (guessing) $500K I have spent.

@frazeur1

+1

Yep. We all have our passions. Also, this reminds me, “It is best to have a friend with a boat”. Like having a friend with a pickup truck. Ownership is a tremendous amount of work and money… or always having friends ask you to help them move.

No one has asked to borrow my system. Of asked to hear it for that matter… “it’s mine, all mine… my Precious!”.

@sns

Good point. I remember much earlier in my pursuit of high end audio being very happy once my system was in place that I got years of pleasure at no additional cost (not including record collecting). I would go many years 5 - 10 without any investments.

My system cost is about double what it has been since my retirement. But if I just consider the incremental $75K I put into my system since I retired (earlier investments well amortized) and that I listen about 1,100 hours a year… assuming I live at least another 10 years… That’s about $7 / hour. My season tickets to the symphony are about $70 / hour. Or $35 / hour if only one seat.

Of course I have custom made bicycles.. those are about $2 / hour. I ride about 5,000 miles a year.