The argument against upgrading

As I get older, I'm starting to move from the critical/serious listening phase to the just have fun phase like when I was just getting into hifi. I have a lot of equipment and I'm going to start downsizing soon. I've spent a lot of money just tweeking things and not really enjoying it. My 'fun' stuff keeps getting better and better and my upgrading days are numbered. 

There is no contradiction between enjoying music and learning how to optimize the system/room if you dont throw money in upgrades instead of experimenting at low cost...

I never listened critically by the way, save in the years i had no clues, this expression is often used by audiophiles referring to their gear pieces workings or  last upgrades...

I listened with my heart and feelings to my system/room  and i am attentive to my immersive engagement level, because it is my immersive engagement level ( my ears/brain/body  long term feelings memory) which taught me how matter can be improved or what matter is lacking and what to do about "timbre" ,dynamics,transients,imaging,soundstage,LEV/ASW ratio etc ...

It is so because i am in a continuous  engagement never disrupted by passive frustration  with attention oriented toward a new possible upgrade piece as easy solution, i instead concentrated on what i can do right now at very low cost to increase my already given happiness by a continuous optimization process with the same system/room...

i felt  an analytical listening burden in the years i did not knew what to do because i had no clue about the mechanical,electrical and acoustical solutions and no clue about DSP solutions...

When you are able to guess the problem and a possible solutions it is because you are guided by engagement with a specific system not by frustration and analytical listening and the urge of  dreaming about any costlier upgrade...

Acoustics basics concepts linked to a chosen  synergetical system in a specific room picked once for all  are the key, not money investment ...

No reviewers tell the tale, they sell  easy solutions to frustration ...They dont say: stop buying and study and experiment...

They say: plug and play, our product is the best ...Thats a lie ....The best occur always  after mechanical,electrical,acoustical and DSP optimization and this is true for any piece of gear and any system at any price...

There is no comparison ever between pieces of gear and system room before their optimization and after their completed optimization... No relation at all for any piece at any price...

Always amazed that people who think nothing of spending tens of thousands on components and cables don't put the same value on analyzing and applying acoustic treatments to their listening room. Acoustic treatments aren't an upgrade. They are an essential part of music system.

J.Chip

Too often an initial "holy sh*t" can turn into an "oh sh*t" 3 months later when you realize that your initial reaction to the change is something you can't live with long-term (too bright, fatiguing, sounds bad on the recordings you like, etc.).

@newton_john asked an important question which, IMHO, no one has really even addressed here. It's the perennial question facing the audiophile: is one in it for the music, or for the thrill of the reproduction? For the music, or for the kit? newton_john says that he can "get into and enjoy certain recordings" even "before making the change" (of equipment) and that, even if the change "provided...some audible improvement in sound quality," nevertheless, he "can't get into the recordings more than that"—that is, more than he did prior to the change.

Now, I hope this isn't quite true. Isn't the whole point of "improving sound quality" for the sake of "getting into the music more"? But I nevertheless see his point, as I suppose we all do. There are certain pieces of music I've loved all my adult life. I first heard them on equipment vastly inferior in sound quality to what I have now. But can I say that I can now "get into" those favorite pieces better, more fully, than I ever have? Certainly not! Getting really involved in the music is a complicated thing; it involves far more than the equipment and the room acoustics. Most importantly, it involves one's own mind at the moment. But it also depends on how important music is for you in that particular time of your life, who you may be sharing it with, how much you already know about the music that what you're listening to developed from, how susceptible to musical enjoyment you are at the moment, how young your ears are (face it: we old guys have lost a lot more in hearing than our audio systems can compensate for!), and many other factors. 

So, get over it: we chase "the absolute sound" NOT for the sake of the music, but for the sake of the thrill of the sound itself: for the thrill of being able to convincingly reproduce a symphony orchestra (for example) in our own living rooms. That's fine. It's a lot like the thrill of owning a performance vehicle whose capabilities one will never really test, being too old, or not a trained driver. Again, that's OK. 

Upgradeitis is a matter of loving the equipment for the sound it can produce. Music is the main source of entertaining or engaging sound, so we mostly listen to music on that equipment. But love of music is not what audiophilia is about. I know a lot of audiophiles and a lot of musicians. There is a very small overlap between these populations.

BTW, congrats to @mahgister for finally using ChatGPT, or whatever program he must have used, to clean up the prose in (most of) his first post here.