I can understand where Ken and Shep are coming from. One of the things that audio epiphanies have in common is that they either occur during a time when you are very satisfied with the system you have or they take a direction that you are or are looking to take your system and turn it around on its ear. They are invariably accompanied by a feeling of "DAM, I've got to get me one of those!!!"
. and then very often followed by a felling of either frustration, or simply more searching, because what we though was the golden ticket to audio nirvana doesn't sound as good in our system as we thought (or wished ) it would because we don't have the same room or equipment synergies or even just play the same music as in the demo we heard. It is also because audio memory and imagination often inflated the quality of a past audio session to something that it actually never was. (This effect is also very prevalent among middle aged (ex-) athletes. Recent get together of guys I played ice hockey with back in my college days turned to stories about the "good old days." After about a half hour of reminiscing I commented to my teammates "Has anybody else noticed that the older we get, the better we were?") So the original epiphany can lead to spending money that you just didn't think you needed to spend before it occured and can also lead to frustration as your system does not produce quite the same sound as you remember (or imagined) from the original demo. This can lead you further spending to chase what you heard. Or in the alternative the new purchase can do just what you had oped for but at the same time reveal shortcomings elsewhere in the system that were not apparent before, with the same results, more equipment purchases. It can become a viscous cycle of frustration and expenses that would not have happened without the epiphany because you were (at least temporarily) happy with things the way they were.
As for personal epiphanies I have had two over the last 12 months or so that had nothing at all to do with hearing anything.
First let me start by saying that I have a good friend that until recently owned and operated a high end audio shop. over the last 25 or so years I have spent many afternoons "lost" in his store helping him dial in an new set up of some of the new top of the line models by manufacturers like, Thiel, Martin Logan, Audio Research, Classe' Oracle,etc., none of which I could afford at the time, but all of which I immensely enjoyed listening to
(Heck, there was always Lotto.)
Epiphany #1 - Given the recent economic trouble we have been going through, much of this top of the line equipment that I had lusted over for years was now being sold of on a regular basis for 12 to 25 cents on the dollar. $10 -20K speakers that can be had for $3-5K, $4K amplifiers for $800. Granted, this stuff is not as good as some of the top of the line equipment today, something that sounded amazing 10 years ago will still sound amazing today. And with the exception of digital front ends whose technology seems to change on almost a weekly basis, I'm not sure there have been many quantum leaps in audio quality over the last 15 years. Refinements, yes, but quantum leaps, not so much. Unfortunately as a baby-boomer the near(er) term prospect of retirement has brought some common sense into my spending decisions (doesn't that suck?)
](https://www.audionervosa.com/Smileys/default/eusa_wall.gif "Brick wall")
So without an audio epiphany to drive some stupidity into the thought process, I just ended up sitting on the sidelines and admiring the prices. Until.....
Epiphany #2 - Late this summer my wife's brother was diagnosed with lung cancer. (I actually just came back from his funeral last night. It was actually a blessing that he went so fast as there was no coming back from where it was when they found it. Sometimes fast is good) Back in Sept, during last time we visited with him (he live almost 600 miles away) he made a statement that really stuck with me. He said "Tom, stop putting things off until tomorrow, because you never know how many tomorrows you have left." This is something I should have well understood since my own father dropped dead of a heart attack at age 46, but sometimes you just need to get hit in the head with the obvious. The day after we got back from that trip a pair of those speakers that I had lusted over appeared on Audiogon for only$2400. I took it as a message from God. My logical engineer brain now took over and pushed me in the other direction. I figured, if $2400 is going to make or break my financial stability in retirement, I have much bigger problems than whether or not to buy a pair of speakers. Armed with that logic I approached my wife, who would have to buy in on this deal since it would be very tough to sneak a pair of speakers weighting 150 lbs a piece into the house without her noticing it. She took one look at the ad and said, "What are you going to do, wait until you are old and half deaf and decide to but the speakers when you can hear them anymore? Just do it. When was the last time your wife actually
told you to buy some new audio gear???
/ That in and of itself was probably as much of an epiphany as anything else in the story. So anyway, I am actually now the proud owner of a of a pair of Thiel CS-6s and loving every minute of it. And every time the system gets turned on both my wife and I both think of her brother, which is actually quite appropriate because although he was an equipment neophyte, Ray was a big music lover.
This post has gone on to become quite long winded, but the bottom line is that epiphanies often come from places that you would least except find them.
