Don't fret Pancho. You haven't gone mad. I infer from your contemplation of entering the conservatory that you are intimately familiar with the sounds of acoustic instruments. If this is indeed the case, your high resolution system maybe overkill. Your brain is probably converting the sound of an instrument (e.g. piano), rendered by the Walkman, into the sound of an actual acoustic piano that's stored in your memory. Therefore, there is no need to be "spoon-fed" by a hi-fi system. I suggest that you purchase a nice bookshelf system, enjoy the music and indulge in what you really like...gold-plated pocket protectors.
Recommend me a good psychologist
I used to be a happy guy with a huge passion for music, especially classical music. Music was so important in my life that I almost quit my final engineering studies (electrical) to enter to the conservatory dreaming to be one day a great orchestral conductor. I realized that it was too late to continue with that dream and decided to finish the electrical engineering. I used to enjoy so much my classical music cd’s with my 70 bucks sony discman (with megabass!) that I really did not care about the perfect sound but the perfect performance. I used to be really transported by music until I accidentally met “Mr. High-End” in Internet. That was about two years ago when I finally decided to get a “dream stereo system” with a budget of $2000 (wow!!). To make this story short, I was entrapped by “Mr. High-End” and ended with a $10000 buck system after an extensive search and auditions of components. The very sad part of this story is that I enjoyed more the music with my old cheap discman than with this high-end thing. YES, the high-end system sounds much better but now I can not concentrate in the musical message but in those terms well known in the audiophile world (soundstage, microdynamics, warm, bright, transparency, focus, image, bla bla bla…). Now I find myself buying music that is well recorded and sounds good with this system and not the music that I used to love. To be honest, I would have preferred to meet Mr. High-End NEVER. Do I need to visit to the psychologist? Whom do you recommend me?