Also if you spent several thousand dollars on a cartridge , the least you would want is it to be performing at its best.
You seem to be implying that someone who spent less than several thousand dollars on their cartridge is less demanding or has lower standards. I have enough invested (more than $1) in my vinyl rig that having it perform at its best is important to me. Let's not make this about money.
I wasn't critical of anyone who thinks the Fozgometer is a useful tool. But I don't agree that one is necessary to get a cartridge aligned well enough so it produces great sound. I don't loose any sleep over the thought that others might have spent way more money than I have on my set up or that they may even be enjoying better sound. I spend within my means and enjoy what I have. Keeping up with the Jones' is not the reason I am in this game. I do what pleases me and don't much care whether or not someone else approves of it.
--Jerome
I don't think that Mike was trying to make this about money or be critical of what people did or did not spend on equipment but rather was just using a large purchase price as an indication that the person must have been very serious about the sound. and he feels that if they are serious enough to spend big bucks then they should be serious enough to want to wring the most out of that investment.
I am going to tread lightly here because this can get to be a very touch subject around here and I don't want to upset anyone or get into another "class warfare" debate, but let me make this quick comment on that idea:
This is a hobby that usually ends up requiring a good amount of cash to do well. And the people who get involved generally fall into two categories those that are well off financially and can lay out large sums of cash without thinking about it too much and those for whom participating in this hobby puts a significant drain on their disposable income and therefore want to writing every last once of performance out of every dollar the spend. (and of course not every body fits exactly or exclusively in one of these boxes, it is just a general observation. And at no time during this discussion am I trying to imply that one type is in any way better than the other.)
But the fact of the matter is that most people who make a lot of money do so at a cost....time. This leads the two groups to to view the hobby at times from very different perspectives.
To the average working Joe who loves music and makes a decent living at a 40-50 hour a week job the critical resource in putting together a high end system is cash. This is and expensive hobby and often strains the budgets of those involved in it. But what this guy does have extra of this time, so he uses that time carefully research his purchases and to tweak and modify his system such that he gets the absolute most sound he can out of every dollar he spends
On the hand, to the corporate executive or law firm partner, who has plenty of money to spend, but regularly spends 80+ hours a week in the office or on the road (you don't think they just give you those big salaries for nothing, do you?) the critical resource is very often time. They have very little time to listen to the system and would much rather just throw money at it so they can spend what little time they have listening t the system rather than working on it.
To the working guy spending several hours optimizing a $1K cartridge to get it to sound like a $2K cartridge is a great deal and meets their needs for the system. While in the case of the time constrained rich guy, he might be much more happy with a roughly set up $4K cart that sounded like a $2k cartridge because if he spent the time tweaking the Cart to optimize its potential he would have no time left to listen to it. Both guys got the sound of a nice $2k cart and both are very comfortable with the path he took to get there.
As my brother-in-law used to say to me whenever we started a project,"all it's going to take is time and money, how much of each are you willing to dedicate to the project and that will determine the path that we take to accomplish it." I am going through a very similar decision path right now at home. Now that my wife has passed I am faced with the prospect of repairing all of the sheetrock holes and ripped up molding caused by her trying to navigate her power wheelchair through a house that was never designed as handicapped accessible.
Now this is nothing that I really couldn't handle myself, but given all the other demands on my time a project that would take a professional 2 or three days to complete would drag out form month with me working an hour or two at a time. So I have to make a choice of whether to pay someone I to do something I am perfectly capable of doing myself and forgo other potential uses of that money or to use that money for something else (like a system upgrade) and give up a good chunk of my free time. (BTW, if anyone reading this is an un or underemployed carpenter in the Long Island area, shoot me a PM, we need to talk.)
Bottom line here is that there is no right or wrong hear at time vs money decision is a very personal one and just depends on what works for you at the moment (and yes these things do change over time. There are plenty of things that I would not have thought twice about doing three years ago and will probably not think twice about in another three years but just do not have the strength or ambition to tackle right now.)
Wow, who said this was going to be a quick comment?
