There's a quote from Tolstoy about the uniqueness of unhappy families that probably applies to this man's life. I don't think his audiophile obsession was the source of his husband/1st wife or father/son problems. The root cause was his personality and behavior. He was an imperfect human and not everyone was willing to tolerate him.
My takeaway from the article is that whatever anyone achieves will never survive. You could conquer half of the world and a few hundred year pass and it looks just like it did before you were born. Of course, you could always build a Great Pyramid.