He spent his life building a $1 million stereo. The real cost was unfathomable.

My perspective based on The Post story: this was a monomaniacal obsession with serious consequences for his family and for himself as well. 

Of course, it's difficult to comment on his psyche not knowing him (and maybe it would be presumptuous anyway), but presumably a lot of the information came from people who knew him well and/or were related. Many of them came across as disliking the guy and his hobby due to his fixation on that project.

So, the facts are that he spent a lot of money (most of it lost to his hiers) and appears to have alienated and offended in equal amounts. A sad story, in some ways...

The real story here is about caring for your loved ones. 

@prefab Yup.

And there are most always different sides to most things. 

And why the two grandfather clocks?

Pretty sad story all around. Weird system, def not worth the money, time and terrible strife and division he caused in his family and sold for piece meal pennies on the dollar when he died. 

Wow.  I mean..........wow.  What a tale, almost worthy of a Shakespeare byline.

I venture to say that, sadly, he suffered from an obsessive disorder that clearly prevented him from maintaining what most would consider "normal" relationships with his family, perhaps others.  While the emotional methodology behind his pursuit left a family in tatters, and his level of audiophilia could only be considered malignant, I have to believe that when not set to "movie", his system may well have been THE finest personal sound system ever assembled in a home environment, never to be duplicated.  I'd have given an eye tooth to have heard it.  It's final disposition is tragic, IMO.

RIP, brother.