When did you put the most effort in setting up your audio system?


We all have this moment at the time you have put yourself through a lot of things when setting up your audio system. Please share your experience when you think in the past or present, you did put in so much efforts. 

 

To share my own experience, just to compare two different speaker products, I bought both products in new, held on to them for 4-5months. During the time I had them, I changed amps(2 different power amps), DACs(5 of them borrowed, bought and returned), speaker cables(3 times). Even after all these, I couldn't make up my mind which to keep, then let my sister, who wanted to have a pair, to choose whichever she preferred in design. Crazy... Now, I kinda know what I want, but I don't think I can put myself through chasing all those components just to test out two different products in speakers. 

So now, I am more careful choosing speakers with my existing system then take my time choosing different components. I think I know which components I am deeply attached to. 

Feel free to share your own experience. Leave a piece of your audiophile journey here, we all respect the craziness (or nerdiness) with total disregards in common logics. In Korea, audiophiles call themselves mental patients(hwan-ja in Korean pronounciation), who just do all kinds of crazy things to seek for their satisfaction in audio. I want you to join and share this patient journey, haha.    

 

128x128monacousticusa

Oh....that's an easy one.  "SPEAKER PLACEMENT.'  It took me forever and a day to get the optimal speaker placement of my beloved Revel Salon 2 speakers in my small room.  But once I got it right, it was all over.  Heaven!!!!  

Sorting out the digital front end: switches, cables, filters, servers, power supplies, power cables, isolators, USB tweaks, EMI shielding, software…. the better part of 5 years and still only 95% there?

"Sorting out the digital front end: switches, cables, filters, servers, power supplies, power cables, isolators, USB tweaks, EMI shielding, software…. the better part of 5 years and still only 95% there?" 

I get it antigrunge2 except don't be thinking 5 years is a long time.

I've been doing all that for 30 years. It would be a long post to document it, revealing absolute insanity and musical satisfaction.   For me, as improvements were made,  the opportunity to improve further by maximizing the performance of the major components has been a continuous quest. Major components then sneak in and the process repeats.  I may have learned quite a bit but the most important is that: EVERYTHING MATTERS

I'm done with it now and just enjoy the music. (Did you actually believe that??)

@moguls 

For me, the real fulfillment was the 5 - 7 years between upgrades. I love the time in between upgrades just appreciating the music and what I had accomplished. Then the couple years doing an upgrade… learning, slowly purchasing new and much better sounding components… learning deeply into another aspect. Love that part as well. Overall, I like both enjoying the music and upgrading.