Lay Off the Newbies!

What is wrong with a newbie starting their “research “ here?  What are the alternatives?  Equipment magazines tend to be aimed at the true believers, not at entry level curious.  If the newbie wants vinyl then after reading Stereophile they might think they need to spend $200K after reading Fremer.  Magazines also tend to reflect the biases of their advertisers.  The best thing is for a newbie to throw mud at a wall in a site like this, get a variety of opinions, see what opinions make sense to them, and go from there.  With the loss of stores, the chances of a demo of anything are slim and so the opinions of others are now increasingly important 

@amg Audiogon search engine is good, but the hard part is knowing how to a search phrase that is accurate enough and also doesn't return too many results. My ability to utilize the search engine only increased as I knew what to search for. That problem, in a nutshell, is my rationale for an FAQ category.

I have a younger friend in his teens that has just starting to get into audio---he has a hand-me down stereo from the early 90s. To him, it's the world. He's starting to buy vinyl now and has started asking me about updating his stereo. I find it so much fun helping him and being with him on his new journey. I doubt he would be asking me to help him out if I was critical of his system or judgmental. I respect most people in this forum, but there will always be bad apples. 

Boone’s Farm was what we use to get the girls drunk and horny. Preferred hash over pot but yes room was smoking. I think back and get depressed on how much of my life I missed out on this hobby. Don’t get me wrong I love music and have been enjoying since I was 5. I look back are realize that I spent most of my life hearing music and not listening. Sitting out of the sweet spot thinking that this is the bomb, one speaker crammed in a corner the other hanging from the ceiling. With my current set up I will play the same album from yesteryear and it does not even sound like the same band. Back to subject is yes we don’t need to discourage the “newbies” I think half of the sarcasm is done in just to play with the seasoned posters (poking the bears). This a lot of the time is directed at those we play with and the “newbie” is just Collateral damage. Another point is they need to go through the same struggles we did to truly enjoy the journey and get to where we are today in the hobby, we had no threads to post questions even thought we had the same dumb questions. Now get off my lawn!!!

Music evokes the emotions differently for every person, but the commonality is that it always will.  I’m new to this hobby but then again I’m not…

I spent almost 10 years attending audio shows, reading forums like this one, and going to boutique audio shops demoing equipment, listening to different combinations of gear. I was searching for that “perfect” setup. It knew it had to exist right? However technology evolves and I could never quite convince myself to be satisfied, because there was something always better, there had to be. So the search went on and on and on. Unfortunately, I was missing the whole point, which was to enjoy music. 
Just last year I circled back to one of the original shops I found a decade prior and the shop owner remembered me and was like ‘what the hell are you doing, you need to start enjoying your music, you’ve wasted how much time trying to perfect a system?!’ He called me out on my unending search for perfection. I did what he said and I’m loving my music.

To all the “newbies” out there like me (and maybe you’re not really a newbie)…ignore the arguments about what components are better and why you should or shouldn’t buy a piece of gear. Just buy a system that fits your budget, tweak it over time, don’t worry about perfection because it doesn’t exist, and enjoy your music! Best piece of advice I’ve received.