After retiring 18 months ago I’ve spent a lot of time, energy and money in putting together a nice system for my wife and I to enjoy in our retirement. This after a relatively long period in the hi-fi wilderness (after many years of Naim ownership) for reasons that I won’t bore you with.
I’m very fortunate that Gail is as passionate about music as I am and also takes an interest in the equipment and does not dismiss the obvious improvements to be had from such things as Powerlines as she’s heard it for herself - and likes it!
I’ve made a few costly mistakes but we’ve got there in the end. Everything is nicely set-up and sounding wonderful. Upgrades are out of the question financially. We are on our pensions and financially secure but that wouldn’t last long if we started to play the upgrading game. Fortunately I’ve been lucky enough to have had the means to do it all in the past and largely got it out of my system.
So the system is what it is and will stay like that, hopefully giving us many years of enjoyment. I feel that now is the time to focus my attention elsewhere and to embrace other aspects of life with all the time we now have on our hands. That’s not to say I will ever lose interest in hi-fi. I’ve been interested in it since I was a young boy and it’s just part of who I am. But there are other fish to fry.
So I probably won’t be looking in here as often now. I offer a piece of advice that came my way as a 12 year old from the elderley proprietor of a local electronics shop that sold pick-up cartridges and the like. I had gone in there wanting to upgrade the crystal cartridge of my BSR record player to a ceramic one! A fairly pointless excercise and he knew it. He could see I was stressing over it and that my expectations were unrealistic. Being a kindly type he said to me " You know that the whole point of an audio system is to let you enjoy your music. Stop worrying about it and just stick with what you have and enjoy listening to your records". Obvious perhaps but he made an impression on me as a young lad and his wise words have stayed with me since!
All the best to everyone and please enjoy your music.
Nice one Pete…
Hope you and your wife have many years enjoying listening to music through your system.
Im where you are now, probably about 15 years earlier… best wishes.
Hope you do carry on looking in here, you will have a lot of life experience that many of us appreciate in other forum members ( almost all of the time at least). Lots of diverse topics
Thanks for that Pete, and the thoughtful sign off. I’ve no intention of changing anything in my largely vintage system for many years, saving catastrophic failures. But I still stick around here, I love seeing what music people are playing, what wines people are drinking and other random threads. So a long-winded way of leading up to saying I hope you stay around, enjoy the chat here and keep sharing your excellent contributions.
Wise words for sure. It’s easy to forget that this is really the goal.
Your profile doesn’t show system details @anon33182107 . I’d be interested in what combo of system components you ended your journey.
Thanks to everyone for your kind words and thoughts.
Just for the record my system is Moon 260D CD transport (for Gail, who refuses point blank to use the Melco!), Melco N100 digital music library, Melco D100 CD ripper, Plixir Statement Linear Power Supply for the Melco N100, Moon 340ix amplifier with on-board DAC, Klipsch Forte III speakers. On the video side Sony UPB X800 4K Blu ray player with multi-region mod, Apple TV box and Sony 48 inch 4K TV. Sound provided by the hi-fi, 2 channel only obviously. Quadraspire SVT bamboo rack, mains blocks by Chord and Atlas, all cables Chord except 3 Naim Powerlines for the CD transport, Melco N100 (ie. Plixir P/S) and Moon amp.
The starting point was the Klipsch speakers which we had both set our hearts on. Hence the Moon electronics. Naim would not have been a good match I feel - a shame.
I think most people here would probably agree with me that no matter how much money we had at our disposal, and no matter how expensive a system we were able to buy, we would all still be looking to make improvements! It’s in our nature - that’s what being a hi-fi enthusiast is and what makes us different from ‘normal’ people! But we love it!
Please enjoy your music. What a good reminder of what it’s all about. Reading some of the posts on here makes it clear that it’s all too easy to forget what having a nice system is all about. I’ve found over the years that the times pondering on what to do next are the times I enjoy the simple pleasure of listening to music the least.
Enjoying life is the most important thing. None of us know what’s around the corner. When I retired - unexpectedly early following an accident - the best thing I bought was our little caravan. I could have spend the same amount on hifi but it wouldn’t be anything like as much fun. It sounds as though you have your priorities exactly right.
Congratulations on getting off the merry-go-round that is hifi! Sounds like you’ve got a fabulous system there and I hope it brings you both a lot of pleasure. Enjoy the music!
My HiFi/Life balance is that when the spring/summer comes I switch the HiFi off and then switch it back on when it’s no longer worth going outside in the Autumn usually around the second week in September.
