This is a silly hobby.

Right, silly hobby. Not at all like oneophiles who spend tens of thousands on old grape juice. Or my fishing and hunting friends who end up spending several grand to kill a fish, or an elk, or whatever. Or classic car collecting, or falconry, or spelunking, or match book collecting, or all of the other sensible hobbys.

As far as relative usefullness goes, is your system so good that it will play without speaker cables?

Foolishness is relative
If one has relatives
sooner or later one is foolish
Audio is not so bad a way to go

It's only as silly as you let it get.

You know, Viridian is correct.

I have a buddy who collects watches. I wear a Tag Heuer I bought 2 years ago that to me seemed nice enough. But my buddy buys watches that cost many multiples of my Tag's purchase price, just to have them. Of course they all do the same thing: Attempt to accurately display the current time. And it gets funnier- some of the more expensive watches he owns are quite inaccurate next to my "inferior" Tag. He of course points out it's about the craftsmanship, not just accuracy. Sounds like tube versus SS arguments to me!

My point? Your opinion about the excesses of others depends upon your interests. I love watches, but one Tag will do for me. I will however drop several grand on a piece of equipment without a second thought if it will help me enjoy my music more.

To each his own!

I agree with you Grimace and disagree with Viridian and Danlib1. It's easy to justify the exorbitant amount spent on audio gear by using other excessive hobbies as examples. Those hobbies have the potential for absurdity as easily as this one. Besides, high end audio is not really a hobby anyway. "Hobby" needs to be dropped. The money I've spent and what many are spending on this gear is absurd; especially when the sound we achieve does not meet the expense. For those where money is no object it's fine. But those of us who live in a "money is no object" scenario are in a minority. For me, my investment in high end gear has gone far beyond what I could have conceived of 5 years ago.