The idea of permanently maintaining multiple arms and cartridges (or preamps, or...) isn't even remotely tempting. Why or when would I ever choose to listen to the inferior ones? Comparing different flavors of distortion really doesn't interest me.
I suppose I'm not a true audiophile. :-(
Audiophiles want to talk about Audio, not about Music.... or there is another sentence "The difference between Men and Boys is the price of their Toys"
Anyway, everyone has his own preferences and priorities, musical emotion can be also served via MP3 or Car Radio, the human brain works different. Interestingly, EVERYONE is able to detect good sound even with totally unknown hardware, you can see that in High End Shows. The remarkable time frame is a few seconds later when everyone tries to rate something for himself (...too big, too expensive, too cheap, ugly, too black, too shiny or whatever) this is an individual decision. When you ask a group of listeners after that demo, you will hardly find a common opinion, 4 audiophiles, 5 opinions...
Analog is in a way pure precision and knowledge, some Designers made a better product than others because they know the way of what-is-responsible-for-what.... does that mean, after a while you can find the one and only solution? No. But you can narrow it when you understand what you hear, then the rest of your System is made for that anyway.
The most impressive Systems I listened to in the last 15 years (about 5) were different, some with Electrostats, Horns, Dynamic speakers, some with tube amps, Transistor amps, various turntables, Arms and cartridges ... but in a way they all had something in common:
The owners were deep in records, they all had an impressive background knowledge and all their components were done right in a way ....Independent from price. Thanks for the reminder, when I go back to those situations, all had 1 Table, 1 Cart, 1 Arm, 1 Phonostage....I am working on it still...
