Audiophilia: Is it the pursuit of audio excellence or just a desire to tinker.

Tinkering is kind of fun but I don't have the electrical knowledge or experience to do it seriously.

@jacobsdad2000 

We simply have differing perspectives regarding what you dismiss as "semantics". 

It's both and something else too.  It's a lot of fun to tinker, learn, design, and grow in the hobby. Add to that the love of music faithfully reproduced and !Viola! A payoff for your hard work. 

Most HiFi guys are aesthetics- lovers of beauty, symmetry and perfection. Some call this snooty or uppity but the pursuit of excellence demands dismissal of the imperfect. This can be offensive to the folks who's patron saint is Mediocrities. 

There is three basic areas about which we can experiment ...

Tinkering is a  more uninformed play  than systematic experiments ...We must study a bit here not just play...

Electrical , mechanical and acoustical are the three areas  to adress for any system at any price ...

When all we can do in this areas  is finished our system has reach his potential ; before that our system nevermind the cost would not be able to reach his potential best S.Q.

No singular upgrade will replace the necessary experiments to embed rightfully  the components not even the upgrades of all components can do the job by purchasing his way to the top S.Q. 😊 Money cannot replace studies and experiments  ... Sorry ...

No measuring tools can magically do the job ...

Even the best designed digital tool ever in my opinion  , the DSP based BACCH filters cannot replace electrical, mechanical and acoustical embeddings ...And my only future upgrade will be the BACCH filters ...

Both.  In your search for "audio excellence", "tinkering" is one of the procedures.  Like changing the cartridge on your turntable.  May seem to be "tinkering" to most.  At $5,000, I would not call it, Tinkering.  Probably closer to Surgery.