I have everything detailed for insurance purposes, costs, serial numbers, etc.
Looked back at them and there are over 20 that I’d need to review and evaluate to get a total figure.
Based on this and the effort needed, as others have said, a lot.
DG…
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I believe answering this question would provide evidence of my insanity if my wife were ever to divorce me. My project to develop an audio product was even more money and definitely more evidence.
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No idea. I guess somewhere between €50000-70000. I have spent around €30000 on my current system.
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Never do this. 
I bet your spouse says the same thing with “half” replaced by “double”.
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I have not spent enough,
But if you have spare money it will be greatly spent, I mean received🤣
I’ve always used a varying degree of reality mixed in with optimism regarding declared cost, I’m sure my wife has her own chaos maths whenever anything is spotted as assumed cost.
I never understand people concealing from or deceiving their partners over hifi expenditure (I’m not quite sure if that’s what you meant, but certainly others have indicated that they do). A true partnership or marriage surely should be based on complete trust. I have always been completely open and honest with my wife about all expenditure except when it comes to buying birthday or Christmas presents for her, which with a joint account (trust again) can be tricky.
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I have no real idea. My Quad amplifiers and Celestion Dittons, served me well for twenty years, until I bought some higher end gear ten years ago. I was able to make a big upgrade (for me) recently and I bought a Naim XS3 and some PMC speakers. Pretty modest by what I read here, but it sounds good to me. With trade-ins, I spent €5000.
I use headphones a lot, as Free/Contemporary Jazz sends my wife into mutiny mode. So I spent another €1700 on a pair of Sennheiser HD800S cans, and then €500 on a pair of SH Beyerdynamic T1 Ver2 headphones, that do not leak sound so much, and are better for music where bass is important.
I am looking at a SH €650 Cocktail Audio NS25 streamer to test the download/streaming waters. I am buying quite a few CD’s from Bandcamp and I want to play digital download that comes with the hard copy on something a bit more decent than my Astell and Kern portable.
The Cocktail Audio might be a stopgap, if I find that just buying a digital download Wav file turns out to be as good as a CD on my Musical Fidelity CD player. After a lifetime of buying music on a physical support, it is hard to immagine just having my music as a file on a hard disk, or streamed from the cloud.
I tend to have moments of spending on HiFi, every ten years or so, so I quess my outlay spread over the years is pretty modest. I buy a lot of CD’s though.
My wife and I have an unspoken agreement, about not asking each other the price of my toys and her passion for Prada and friends.
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I’ve never comcealed the cost of hifi from my wife. Many years ago when my dealer quoted me GBP25k for a new system on front of Mrs. FZ she just told me it was “a drop in the ocean compared to what she spends on hand bags and shoes.”
But I do conceal my expenditure from others, including the kids (they can’t keep their mouths shut). It’s none pf their business. People judge. It’s not worth it. My father in law would go berserk despite the fact he probably dropped more than that on booze and cigarettes every 5 years. My mother, once a Linn seperates customer herself, certainly has a different attitude to how money is spent now compared to just 30 years ago. Back then, she’d consider spending a few grand on hifi as a necessity for enriching life and nourishing the mind. These days it would be, “pissing money away irresponsibly”. The fact I save over 50% of my income and have done so for decades would never balance the scales in some people’s minds.
I probably go as far as actively avoiding hints of prosperity (though since Covid my financial position declined sharply and I don’t see any recovery). If you met me on the street, you’d probably think, “He’s living on food stamps.*”
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Overall, more on cars and hifi than in houses. Crazy but true.
If only I’d bought multiple houses.
Far more than I would have imagined two years ago when my audiophile journey started. However, this opened up a whole new world of music experience for me and my children (my wife is agnostic in that respect 
) that i would not want to miss again.
There are challenges:
- I seem to have implicitly “accepted” a “more expensive = more audiophile” reasoning which bothers me about the future to come
- From time to time, I am contemplating whether I am actually addicted to improving sound. There is a strong urge and craving for better sound that i find difficult to overcome. I am now meditating and doing joga to try to overcome this while still enjoying music. You could argue that this is actually a positive health effect of my spending
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No idea, but current car, hi fi and camera systems all about the same costs and none of it bough ‘new’ - just wisely - light used and a step down from ‘latest and greatest’. Biggest expenditures are the mortgage and daughter’s school fees (due to go up 20% thanks to new gov).
I qualified as a junior doctor in 1985. Spent 7.4% of my salary on an ex-demo Linn Sondek (£250), Naim 42 (new, about £200), an ex-demo Naim 110 (about £210) and Linn Kans (about £200). Never bettered.
Bought a Naim 500DR this year, similar ballpark percentage interestingly! Music now from my flagship system is great, but not better, not more exciting, than those first Naim years.
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Absolutely.
Better hifi than anything from 1985 doesn’t make up for youthful exuberance/ excitement at new things and so on. After all, most of us get hooked enough that we still spend a lot of time listening to the music that we played then (in my case mostly from c.1966-c.1986).
Better hifi also can’t make up for what time does to our ears.
Otoh, hearing my original (but serviced a decade ago) 72/HC/140 at a mate’s house recently highlighted (a) why I liked them so much and (b) for all that they do well in boogie, they are in a very different category for SQ overall.
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In 1998 I bought my current house for £83k. It’s worth about £440k now.
I have probably spent about 80k on Hi fi over this time, but my current system is worth much less than that second hand.
That said, a home is not a home without a (good) hi fi (or dogs).
My point? No idea 
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I don’t think dogs are an alternative to hifi at all! (Deliberate mis-interpreting.). But absolutely, a house is not a home without a hifi that pleases my ears.
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A dog can also please your ears… Lol
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Absolutely not,
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