What is your audio axiom?


So we all have been given audio advice and also shared with others our tips and advice. I ask you to share your #1 audio axiom. If you were giving advice or sharing experience (say to a young person starting in this hobby) what would it be? 
 

Here is mine (to start). “No matter how good your audio equipment or system, the quality of any given recording will make or break the listening experience”

Now the ball is handed to you guys…

2psyop

I continually fool myself I'm done upgrading or changing things, don't know if a 'true' audiophile is ever done? Just purchased another SET amp to add to the collection, don't need it yet somehow I find myself the new owner of yet another audio component. The need to taste different flavors replaces absolute need.

There is one law, or best said a principle, guiding the wise audiophile life :
 
What matter is not the gear pieces price or his design, it is up to our budget limit to pick the right stuff for ourselves and our needs.
 
What matter is the way we installed together the mechanical,electrical and acoustical working dimensions of any chosen system/room...
 
As a consequence of this principle this is his corollary:
 
The mechanical electrical and acoustical controls,devices,tweaks, parameters, cannot be replaced by one another  if we want to reach an optimal result in sound quality.
 
Vibrations/resonance controls cannot replace or be replaced by acoustics parameters controls or EMI shielding and grounding for example.
 
The greatest error we can do is buying and  just "plug and play". Then upgrading a piece part by frustration or dissatisfaction, without learning how the whole system may,must,can behave in a  specific room for our specific ears (psycho-acoustics).
 
The other error will be to cure one problem with a gear upgrade before trying to understand what is the problem. 
 
 
This must be meditated by  any beginners before "upgrading" and after "upgrading"...
 
 There is no relation between a piece of gear or a system/room before and after his optimal mechanical,electrical and acoustical installation. None.
 
It is the reason why reviews do not tell all the truth there is to be tell ...
 
This resume what i have learned. 
 
 
 
By the way recording quality variations dont matter if your system/room can present them as they are distinctly all different, on a continuous scale and not  merely in two states : Bad and better. 

Have fun, with which ever system you built and are listening to.  Relish a world of satisfaction rather than relentless critique and unsettled search.
I apply that axiom to travel.  I enjoy whatever level I’m at to include living and working overseas.  It’s all good and I’ve been doing it for decades.

This idea of unique and/or individual recording quality variation is something that has really come into focus for me in recent years. I derive enjoyment from the nearly endless variation in recording qualities, by this I mean paying attention to the choices of producers/engineers in producing a work of art. We are not merely listening to musicians with these recordings, so many others involved to presenting these works of art. 

 

My scale of judgement has far surpassed just good and/or bad, mostly I just turn off the judgement and let the presentation come to me, listening sessions far more satisfying when one turns off the judgement cap. Some believe the more resolving a system becomes the more the warts will reveal themselves, no doubt this true so then it becomes how one perceives those warts. 

"I love re-mastering really old material. All those guys wore ties to work." Rudy Van Gelder