Is advice from a constant upgrader to be avoided


For a while now I've been reading these forums and to be honest i was thinking of leaving. I felt a bit out of depth given that it seems so many others have had so much experience through owning what seems to be tens of speakers, amplifiers, DACs etc etc and reading people buying and selling piece after piece after piece on the search for some sound.... 

When someone asks advice about a certain item it seems like half the audience have owned it and moved on and have a comment to make. I then read about someone buying an extremely expensive amp and deciding quickly to sell it because it doesn't sound right. Then someone else is on their fourth DAC in a year. 

So all these people have advice to give. What I'm wondering now is, is advice from a person who's never content, constantly changing their system, never living with a system for long enough, and have more money than patience, really the right person to take advice from? .

There seems fewer (maybe they're less vocal) people who buy gear and spend the time to appreciate it, and have maybe only had a very few systems in their lifetime. I think I'd rate their advice higher on the gear they know than the constant flipper/upgrader.

Is the constant flipper/upgrader always going to say that the gear they used to own was no good and they've now got better? Maybe their constant searching is because their ear is no good or they're addicted to the rush of opening a new box. 

Just because person X has owned a lot of equipment doesn't mean their advice is to be sought after, it could mean the exact opposite.

mid-fi-crisis

Showing 2 responses by wspohn

There is a subset of this hobby that suffers from auiophilia nervosa - never satisfied with a current component, always searching for the grail amplifier or speaker.

Best not to embark on that journey with them.

@surfcat

"The search for betterment is the passion of the intelligent and curious mind. It is not a disease and not a symptom of a disease. The inability to understand that coupled with the need to ridicule it is, however, a symptom of retardation."

I assume that you would approve of our local high end market populated in great part by local and emigrant Chinese auidiophiles, who buy the new models of any well reveiwed gear the minute the review comes out and sell their one or two year old gear at cut rate prices to those of us who aren’t so easily influenced?

Don’t distort what I said - the urge to improve a system is indeed a natural one that we have all indulged in, but the urge to do so in an obsessive manner is unhealthy and unnatural.