Love for music shatter by highend equipment

I rarely buy CDs for people as gifts because I think the sound is terrible on most people's mediocre CD players. I would rather buy them tapes. I only buy CDs for myself but it's taken me over a decade to build a CD-based system that I like.

In a strange work vector some 20 years ago, I was a salesman in a high-end audio shop. I enjoyed designing systems for intelligent people who wanted good musical reproduction. But I absolutely detested tweak-heads who wanted to A-B different brands of high quality speaker wire.

After some years, the conclusion I came to was that some people are never happy unless they are constantly switching equipment -- and those people will die unsatisifed with their system. The happy people are those who buy a good system and just listen to it, not worrying about the next great amplifier to hit the market.

Moreover, I think there is a distinct dividing line between those who love music and those who love gear. The former will enjoy the audiophile experience; the latter will be tortured by it.

How true, I had been caught up in the later. Then I was set free. I now spend all my money on Music.
My music collection has mushroomed and I enjoy my system fully not worrying about this and that wire or this and that tweak.
In trying to get more people free of this I sometimes may come on a little in your face as I have been told.
Bottom line is.
Key to Audio succes.
1 Never ever read a Review.
2 only buy gear you can listen to in your system.
3 Spend your money on Music
4 Let your ears choose your gear.

Beauty is in the eye (or ear) of the beholder. Just like the person who owns a Ferrari but will never race it or test it's driving capabilities, some people prefer the equipment over the music. Audio equipment has an appeal outside of its ability to respoduce music. Great enginering design, works of visual art, great conversation pieces, status symbols, etc. Who's to say that these characteristics are any less important than a piece of equipment's ability to respoduce music?

I happen to own a 1980's vintage Yamaha B-6 power amplifier just becuase of the way it looks. I don't listen to it, I just look at it. Suits me fine.

There are my two cents and my humble opinion.

Sound quality has nothing to do with music quality period!!! The main problem with these guys that are too lofty to listen to a "cheap" system is that they have their prioraties backwards and are listning for how a system sounds rather than how it plays music. They care more about audiophile terms like soundstaging, bass, imaging, ballance and on and on. But Music does not exist in those parameters. Thus while I have a $30.000.00 plus system in my main room, I had to work very hard to get it to play music better than my $500.00 rack system which plays music better than most of the systems that I have heard in the best Hi End stores price no object. Don't believe this is possable, just read the article in Stereophile called Music is in the Nuance - back several years but still on the web site. Or just start reading Listner Magazine and you will realize that there is a whole nother world out there of music lovers that listen to the music and not the sound of their systems.