Through time i think i have learned that a nice lisining expirience has 4 fundamental pillars. The gear, the room, the software and the brains capebility to be sensitive.
If there is “problems” anywhere in one of the pillars, it sets the max enjoy level for the lisining session.
Some of the “problems” are static and some dynamic.
eg your mood can shift within seconds and you cannot absorb any Music at all.
I can follow mahgister very much as i also beleave in finding the week link in any of the pillars. Some are low hanging fruits, others can be extreme difficult to find and expensive to solve If you have High expectations.
Having some trusted buddies helping with defining what happends with the SQ when tuning/tweaking has helhed me a lot.
In ouer little group we love to find new soulutions on “problems” we didnt know we had until we heard the differance.
One significant change for all of was getting a dedicated lisining room so we were “alloved” to do more extreme things with High negative WAF as well as working on the AC supply to the gear.
I think perfektion is infinity so there will theoretical never an end. Its the proces in learning and enjoying the fruit when some thing is moving your mood dramastic upon lisining, that gives me the energy to be an Audiophile.
Sometimes it can be small things, eg the reisue of a old record from the Tone poet or MFSL One step serie, really done by heart. Finding good music “the software” in every aspekt is also challinging.
The expirience, often like some transcendial movement, when your lisining session moves you and the massage of the artists creates hugge refleactions, its a match in heaven.
The High refferance is like the ocation where you were in love, you invited the person to a nice meal and went to a concert where you got the best seats and the concert place was acoustical perfect and your favorite band had a fantastic feeling and played their best, thats a mood we want to try again when we arrange ouerself in front of the speakers, i guess.
Being a Auduiphile is for me a dynamic proces, where i and the Music events are changing all the time within the 4 pillars but the goal is to have the level climbing up with the energy, funds or intellectuel, that a can spare for this nice hobby.
A lot to control. Happy lisining.