What I wish I knew before starting my audiophile journey

Find right dealer for sure. Hard to know who to trust when you’re starting out. I’ve had dealers recommend crappy gear based on their profit margins. I have a friend that found a good dealer and has had 100% success. 

I should have been more clear, not lion share of budget but a good chuck of budget on speakers. I actually don’t believe I said lion share. That’s my opinion anyway. This is the upgrade path I would start with before experimenting with other gear. Not to discount the importance of streamers, cables, DACS ect. 

AKG_CA

Since there's no hard and fast rules to this hobby its only your opinion which you are entitled to. I've also gone down many rabbit holes based on peoples "opinions". Going through tons of gear has its advantages and disadvantages. One being you learn a lot, the other is it's expensive unless you buy and sell used and understand the maket price and demand. Finding a trustworthy dealer is no easy task. Almost every dealer is in this to make money. Unless they're prepared to come to my house and see my room/set up i'm not taking anyone seriously. My buddy had the dealer come to his house. He also bought everything new and spent over 35 k. Not many dealers will come to your house unless you're droping some serious coin, my experience anyway. 

I actually did my breakdown of my gear cost. It's not as extreme as you might have thought. My next upgrade would be the amp. I'm probably a bit overweight on cables lol.

Grisly,

Everything I bought was used. Some components I bought the same 2-3 times. The reason for this was I had a cap on my budget. In order to buy something else I needed to sell another piece. Through the whole process I only lost money 2 times and made money (not a ton) on almost every other piece. There would be these ah ha moments and I would realize the speakers I had weren’t the problem so I’d buy back the same speakers to validate or amp, DAC ect.. Crazy process I know but it was COVID and I had a 1 year old. Wasn’t a whole heck of anything else to do.

@bigtwin

Thats one of the benefits of buying used. Also, you can break in by running 24/7. It’s not likely anything requires more than 2-300 hours. I did get a pair of new Dynaudio that I ran for a week in my basement with moving blankets over them. One speaker had polarity backwards. I cannot believe anyone needs more than a month to evaluate something. You either like it or you don’t. I struggled with bright gear. I could hear it in 30 seconds. Like a drill going into my ear. That got sold almost instantly. In the end I’m almost 90% sure it had to do with the  power that was coming out of wall. I also avoided silver because I thought it was bright. Now I’m almost all silver with zero brightness. Clean yes, very clean and neutral but non fatiguing and a touch of warmth. Incredible black background which I never understood until I actually heard it.

@bigtwin 

i had H360 and H390. Both were OK. At the time I didn’t have the speakers I have now, along with all the other upgrades. Maybe now I’d be open to try Hegel again. I don’t like that the streamer DAC is all in one box. I sold my Simaudio 340 I X that had the built in DAC and went for the pure analog version which cut down on noise with a blacker background.

@liamowen 

if you read the entire thread you would have seen that I haven’t bought one single new piece of gear. I had a budget of 15 k and I always stayed within that budget. If I wanted another piece that was outside of the budget I had to sell multiple pieces and balance the overall cost. That’s essentially how I ended up trying so many different pieces of gear. I only lost money 2 times and those were unique pieces which I knew would be a hard sell. Mostly I made money buying and selling. I did a lot of research on what was in demand and what the market prices were. I also bought below what I thought was market value. I don’t recommend everyone takes this path, it’s a difficult one for sure. Dealers hated me because I never bought new and tried picking their brains for knowledge. Trust me, no dealers like me. I do have a wife and I also maintain my budget. Lately that budget increased to 18 K but that’s not a significant increase. I now know what I like and what works. And to your point about needing months to determine if a piece is good?? I totally disagree with that statement. It literally takes a week if not hours for me to determine good or bad. I guess when you’ve heard a lot of gear you just instantly have an impression. I either am interested and want to hear more or I know it’s not for me, almost instantly.

@jeffseight 

Totally agree about the room. One of the biggest challenges and constraints in my case. My listening room is my family room and my wife isn’t about to let me throw up a bunch of panels everywhere!! She also doesn’t have any interest in my gear however she does understand it’s something I’m passionate about. Funny enough, a buddy and I were having a discussion reflecting on if we knew what we knew now we would actually start with power and room acoustics before buying even one piece of gear. We laughed because no one starting in this hobby would ever take that advice!!! I would have said you’re crazy !! But I believe it now. Since I can’t really alter my room I needed to work around it. I did sneak one absorbing panel on the back wall because my couch/head is right up against it and it absorbs a lot of bass build up. The challenge was getting it to be wife friendly. Wish it was easier to post something on this forum. Second major challenge  was speaker distance off the walls. Wife put a 15” max limit lol. So with these constraints it’s no easy task to find a combination that works. I 100% know that a different room with the same gear would yield even better results.