Once you settle on which kind of sound, warmer or cooler, pleases you the most, you just have to keep experimenting with different gear before you can finally achieve true audio satisfaction. Just that simple.
Warm vs Revealing—the struggle for balance
For me my upgrade path has been finding balance between warmth and dynamics/detail.
It’s looks something like this: find satisfaction (Raven Nighthawk + Tekton), get upgrade bug seeking more dynamics, get more revealing gear (Ma 352), feel fatigued, buy new tubes (Telefunken) and speakers (SF Olympica); want more dynamics (Mc 601 + c50), I immediately get tube pre because of fatigue (c2300), still too sharp (new tubes and DAC); excellent balance, but of course sell speakers, new speakers too revealing, buy Cardas cables to replace Wireworld (ahh just right for now, but may be a little more revealing might be nice).
And oh yeah, working on fixing the damn room problems!
Chasing the unicorn.
Anyone else doing this back and forth?