I have an agreement with my wife that my music hobby can cost as much as we spend on a car. Given she has a passion for Alfas, that gives me a reasonable budget, but I am always suggesting she upgrades from time to time. If you are serious about this hobby I cannot see why you would spend more on a car than on your music, and try adding up the cost of owning a car sometime. I agree with you Tubegroover, throwing money at the best is just silly. As my brother once said "any idiot can put together a good system for $100,000, the real fun is putting something together for $10,000, or even a lot less, that approaches the best." I tend to focus a lot of my activity (outside of listening to music) on learning how to wring the most out of a given system.
Are you Guys Rich or What!?
I have an old system, nothing special, Adcom, Vandersteens etc and I recently set foot for the first time in a "high end" shop, hoping to get to the next level of audio nirvana. When I saw some of the prices for monoblock amplifiers, cables, the latest speakers etc, I practically fell off my chair when I realized that I could blow $50-100K pretty easily on this stuff. I am not rich. Do you big budget system guys all work on Wall Street or something or do you eat macaroni and cheese most nights to put a few bucks away for CDs and your next upgrade?