Mid-Fi, Hi-Fi or.....?

You are a Audiophile but on the older lower end of the $$ range , Audiophiles are 

always buying something , or at least looking.

OP,

It's the never ending journey isn't it, the question is where does someone decide to get off of the merry go round and be happy? I'm not near there yet.

I love my current set up as it is very enjoyable and musical, but I know that there is so much better sound out there. With my new Clayton Shaw Caladan speakers (coming in February?), I'm at about $19,000 and I still consider my system the lower end of mid fi. I'm buying a new tube preamp in the next few weeks, a new streamer late spring, and I've got more than a dozen DIY cables to make over the next few months. After that I'll enjoy it for a while, let the cable configuration settle out and regroup.....but I'm in a very itchy upgrade swirl right now.

I took a friend to CES/The SHOW about 20 years ago. He told me I was crazy spending $50k or more on an audio system. He thought it couldn’t get much better than his $2000 system and he thought he couldn’t hear that well. 
After the 1st room, he had to pick up his jaw off the floor. Now he understood why people spend $$$ for a system. I spent almost $10k on my 2nd audio system in the late 70’s. It sounded very nice for its day, but technology has changed (as well as the increase in prices) but todays systems for the same price you paid 50 years ago sounds much better today.

I have multiple $2000-$5000 systems in my house, which would very nice, especially for background music. But compared to my reference system that cost more than 10x, the sq is much much better in my reference system, we are not talking about a couple % differences, we are talking night and day difference.

BTW: if I take 1 of my $2000 integrated amp and modified it to the hilt, it will never ever get close to my reference preamp/amp that cost 15x more. The modified $2000 amp will still have the same character sound when it was stock.

NAD most definitely is mid as well as your speakers. Like others who’ve commented, HiFi requires spending 50k plus for a separates component type system. But who cares about the label? Why are you asking anyway? If you love your stereo and sonics then it really doesn’t matter what arbitrary label you or somebody else thinks your stereo is.

Buying HiFi equipment brings a whole new set of headaches. To get all of the potential out of the gear, you’ve got to also be willing to go all the way with your room, cables, power conditioning as well. Otherwise why spend the money?

All those guys who have their gear against the front wall and their racks between the speakers look awesome and they’re enjoying their music just as much as somebody that has a dedicated listening room built for the best possible sonics using high end gear.

It’s all relative. Don’t get caught up in a subjective name for your rig, just enjoy what you have...

johnnotkathi

Good to read about NAD/Thiel combination. Feel free to join Us over on the Thiel Owners thread. You will find a few fans and owners of the CS 1.6 loudspeaker.

Happy Listening!