Sorry, it’s not me, it’s you?

1. I trusted my mother. I went to college. She said she would pack and ship my LP’s, less than 50, so I didn’t need to take them. Nope. Jogged a memory, I should have known better. When I was younger at summer camp, please send batteries, nope.

2. Went to Church Christmas Eve. Got ransacked while gone. They took my AR2x speakers, I’m still mad.

3. Pioneer 6x9 car speakers. Commuting to Philadelphia, 1hr 20 min each way for a while, I wanted to improve the sound in my 1961 VW Bug. They sounded fab in the store. Bought em, put them in the space behind the back seat, excitedly test, what the heck, no bass? Took em back to store: these no good! Guy says "Were they loose, or mounted in a panel? That’s when I learned about the back wave cancelling the front wave. Made a plywood panel, put em in, wonderful!

4. Waited, should have pre-ordered replacement tweeters. My son had some great parties here. EVERY time, they blew one or both Dynaudio D21 tweeters of my JSE Infinite Slope Model 2’s. They would hear nothing, juice the volume up, up, then figure out they had the wrong input. Bang, blast, burnt the factory tweeters. It cost him $60 or $120. each party. After research, I substituted a Focal tweeter, they could take a shot.

5. Trusted my evil stepfather. Mother divorced him. He took a collection of about 100 classical LP’s that had been my uncle’s. (my uncle died young, that’s when I inherited the Fisher President II console). Stepfather put them in storage in Maine. He agreed he should not have taken them, said he would drop them off with my mother. Lie, lie, lie. Then he stopped paying for the storage, the owner confiscated everything, nobody knows where they went.

6. Bought several used LP’s over the years, unknown artists, based on the cover design/notes. Some god awful. Now, I look stuff up on my phone when I need to.

........ other poor judgements I am sure ....

A little story about skiing, but it applies. Learning in the Canadian Rockies, my Dutch friend, Marty, obliged and took me up ever more challenging slopes at Sunshine and Lake Louise - what glorious slopes and God's majestic scenery!  :) 

I wanted to do moguls, and not waste time in learning. One time, I complained to Marty, "I'm doing a lot of falling!" He said, "If you're not falling, you're not learning!" I said, "You will never see anyone fall more than I will (translated; "I get it, and I"m going to push even harder.")

I did, and flipped forward, backward, sideways, but in three seasons I was skiing black diamond moguls! What a great time that was! Some of the most enjoyable times of my life.  

I have made many "mistakes" in speakers over the years; I can't remember them all. Most of them I rather enjoyed at the time, but would not be interested in now. But, I would not trade it for anything, because the payoff has been extreme. 

So, by all means, go ahead and make some "mistakes". Explorers make fantastic discoveries!    :) 

So that makes 2 1/2 audio geniuses, and the rest of us mere mortals.

That feeling of relief is the absolute best gauge of having done the right thing.  You can try to argue yourself into liking/keeping something, but if your gut is telling you otherwise...  For me, trying to imagine how I will feel if I take it back/send it back is the ultimate arbiter.

I had a substandard preamp for a number of years and didn’t realize it until someone here recommended I upgrade. They were right!

I’m happy not to be so insecure that I could never admit publicly I had even once made a poor purchasing decision! How pathetic and exhausting it must be to always have to be right.

I once purchased a tube amp that had a hum issue that I spent an entire year trying to remedy which led to incurring all kinds of supplemental expenses - electrician visits to check grounding, power conditioners, DC blockers, ground lifters, power cables, etc....nothing worked. I finally struck a trade deal with the manufacturer (who said nothing was wrong with my amp) that worked out well for me. That year was so frustrating but since then I’ve never had an issue like that again from my system. It was clearly a problem inherent to the amp but I did learn a lot from the process.