Observation: Passion vs Obsession

There seems to be a tendency to pit music and the Hi Fi hobby against one another. IMHO they are two entirely separate entities that obviously have a relationship to each other stronger or weaker depending on the person. Many musicians love music but could care less about Hi Fi.
Hi Fi is about the sound and it does not have to be related to music. It could be related the spoken voice or various sound effects. 

Are not all hobbies obsessive? You are either into something or you are not. Everybody here is obsessed with Hi Fi or we would not be here.

For some reason egos get attached to this hobby in a way you do not see with other hobbies. Most hobbyists enjoy helping each other and you do see a lot of that here but there are too many times when discussions get adversarial. I'm not sure but I think it is because of the variety of ways to interpret issues and the frustration some of us have with the mythology perpetrated by much of the industry on unsuspecting individuals not educated in a way that allows them to interpret claims correctly. Add this to the miss-understanding of the way our central nervous systems interpret hearing and you have a serious mess. 

@chakster , You forgot the Win Labs cartridge. I owned one. It was awful. 

Strain gauge cartridges are essentially resistors that change their impedance with vibration. They require a voltage source and then circuitry to remove the biasing voltage. So they require a special totally different type of phono stage which is included in the price. If the Soundsmith Strain Gauge cartridge is really good it does represent a good value as you do not need to buy a separate phono stage. I will hopefully find out on December 3rd assuming somebody is still at Soundsmith and they are not all at the show.