I'm an audio engineer. I spent the first 20 years of my career producing music, but migrated to post production sound over the last decade. The reason I got involved with professional audio was a love of music. I played in a band in college in the early-mid '80s, and when I graduated the economy was in the tank. I had some very limited recording gear and my band's rehearsal space. The rest is history. One of my most favorite things about this job is that I get to buy toys... Toys like microphones and amplifiers and speakers. I've always been an audiophile of sorts, but in 2019 when I set out to buy my first new set of main monitors in almost 20 years I became intrigued by JBL's flagship M2s. I realized they had found more homes in audiophile systems than pro studios. I assume it's owing to there being a larger market among audiophiles- there are simply more of them than there are studios. In the end I bought 3 of them and couldn't be happier. I have nearly a million dollars tied up in my business, about 60% of which is the studio building itself. 35% is audio/ video/gear and musical instruments and 5% is office equipment and furniture. The one thing about audiophilia that flummoxes me is the amount of credibility afforded to the most minor tweaks and the retail price of components and cables while proper room design, construction, and treatment often gets little more than a passing mention. Some things I just don't get. Being intimately familiar with how recordings are made gives me a different perspective on what a playback system ought to be able to do.
What do/did you do for a living?
With the increasingly high priced items people own and are selling, I'm curious about the line of work people do or have done. I thought my $5k integrated was a massive investment, but seeing users searching for $100k speakers or $75k SET amplifiers has me curious about the varying lines of work people do to afford these items.