Burned out Audiophile - Trying to Find some Zen

I'm with Newbee--it's really a matter of looking at this as a hobby. Try this, try that and learn something new. I started out in hifi when Stereophile and TAS were not in bed with the equipment manufacturers (at least not overtly). Then you could at least count on an interesting technical piece to learn something new or grow to know and understand the listening preferences of a small stable of reviewers who shared their assessment of different products in an unvarnished fashion. Now the mags are only good for the pictures--every piece of gear is the next best thing and you, dear reader, just got to have it. So now the hobbyist must rely soley on experience to develop any kind of expertise. The joy is in the journey, not finding some final resting point of perfect sound.
One other thing that keeps me in the game--the secondary market that has been created by Audiogon allows you to track the depreciation of your audio assets on a weekly basis. It's like watching the stock market move but you know it only goes in one direction--down. For those of us with limited means the only answer is to turn over equipment to preserve the value it represents on the market. If I were to hang on to the same gear for 10 or 15 years it would be worthless at the end of the day and I would have to start over. Who has that kind of capital?--not me. If I buy smart (low) and sell right (before the depreciation scale begins to head south) I can continually "upgrade" my system without putting in significant funds. I'm a teacher with a paltry income. My teacher friends marvel at my audio system. In the rare case where they ask how much everything cost I tell them first what it would have cost if I paid retail ($13K) and then what I actually paid (6K). Then they want me to put a system together for them for the same money. It took me 15 years to get here--it didn't all happen overnight. So, to conclude, there is no holy grail--just different sounds from different gear. Yeah, the hobby is fun. I've learned a lot over the past years. And, you gotta be on the merry go round if you want to enjoy the ride.

I agree with comments about MUSICAL JOY. If you can find a musical lover's system you will probably better happier than with a super analytical system which reveals faults in the system, recording, etc.
The best advice I have gotten so far has hearing ability in 5 steps:
1) Listens for bass.
2) Listens for tonality - bright, warm, etc.
3) Listens for detail, soundstaging, and all the typical stuff in audio mags. IMHO the road to perpetual unhapiness.
4) Listens for PRAT.
5) Listens for music. The opposite of "technically perfect / musically dead" where ALL you hear is the system. As a generalization, studio monitors which tear the music apart so recording engineers can mix tracks or whatever.

Personally, I am getting into DIY 1) for the sake of learning and 2) because I can tweak the sound the way I want without having to what for Antony Michaelson's latest brain fart. Reading Stereophile is fun because I can learn how companies design their stuff and why.

Having a musical system is key. In my garage, I have an old Sansui receiver & pair of B&Ws, all purchased from thift stores (<$30.00 total) When a great songs comes on, I turn up the volume...no, it is not hi-fi, but it lots of fun.

I guess, in many ways that is why there are burned out audiophiles like myself. At some point, it stopped being fun. It least the gear part. It is no longer fun, looking and buying something only to be tired of the gear a couple months later.

See also the Perpetual Merry-go-round Thread. You need to find a system that helps the music connect with you.

There was a post by someone a while back, or perhaps I read it in the archives during a search, about two types of personalities...a "satisfier" and a "maximizer". The satisfier will buy something of good quality and be happy with it while a maximizer will buy something, perceive flaws(real or imagined), and continue the search for something ever better. Since the search never ends, the maximizer is never happy...rather a sad way to spend(literally) a life when you think about it, but to each his/her own.

If you want to get into the zen aspect of things, or at least the buddhist approach of south asia and/or tibet, then you'll find that "desire" is the root of all evil & unhappiness. If you can eliminate desire, or keep it in it's place (a desire in itself...hence the difference between "try" and "do"), then one can be a much happier person. Seeing the audio equipment game for what it is (substitute cars, golf clubs, boats, motorcycles, or any other material-mania for "audio equipment") helps....it's just a churn of consumerism fueled by "desire"(real, imagined, or imposed)...primarily someone else's desire to own your next dollar(actually your labor)...and most dollars after that. Whatever the item being pushed might actually be is just details. If you think of a bunch of enron-type fatcats sitting around a board room table dreaming up ways of flooding the market with some gizmo and then building a plan to build an "aura"(real or most often imagined) around the product to fuel desire...such that, in the end, they make your money, their money, then it tends to toss a little water of the desire end of things. Images of continually shearing a herd of sheep (your the sheep) also helps. Anytime someone takes a 5 dollar piece of wire, puts some lipstick on it, and marks the price up 7000%...that's shearing sheep...bbbaaah.. aaahhh, but that's just me... :-) ..sorry, I'm off on a bit of a tangent here, it's early & the coffee is kicking in...everyone's mileage varies.

No disrespect intended to the producers pouring their hearts & souls into designing & building equipment. My hat is off to them as they do some fine work & they should be paid for it.

:-))