What are your Eureka Moments in this Hobby?

@lewl28 +1 on that feeling. I'm content, happy and for now, solidly off the upgrade wheel. I've found my lane. 

@hilde45 I think it is true that you did not explain your insight clearly. In your original post, you discussed a false dichotomy between the music and the sound elements. Your post expressed that false dichotomy as a general truth, but in fact, it is a truth for you. Your second post illustrates that dichotomy as a real (true) one, and in fact adds another endpoint. I think what you’ve written about your own realization makes a ton of sense, and I agree with it. But it seemed to be expressed as a general truth, whereas in fact, it’s a personal truth. And I do agree, that all three endpoints of enjoyment can be expressions of defensible motivations!

@peter_s 

Thanks for the thoughtful comment — it’s helping me clarify what I’m actually claiming.

I’m puzzled by the distinction between "personal truth" and "general truth" here. When I say "attentive listening to acoustic properties and attentive listening to music are the same activity under different descriptions," I’m making a claim about the structure of perceptual experience and how it gets formulated, generally. It’s as if I said, "It is hard to balance on a ship in a storm." That’s not just how it is for me, but for anyone like me (most of humanity). 

If what I was reporting was an idiosyncratic psychological state, if it was truly "just personal," we’d have no shared language to discuss it. The fact that you understand the claim and can engage it suggests we’re operating on the same wavelength -- both physically and mentally.

I suppose my question to you would be what is the difference between a personal truth and a general truth?

Some Aha! moments when I finally heard what the big name reviewers were talking about. Many years ago I remember walking into David Beatty Stereo in Kansas City , and they were playing a trumpet concerto through Magnapan Tympani speakers. Each speaker was a triple panel affair, and for the first time ever I could have sworn that trumpet player was right in the room with me. Another time in a store in downtown Seattle, I strolled into the audio store and they had their largest room set up with B&W 801’s, and as luck would have it, it was a slow day in the store and the sales guy fired it up, handed me the remote, and said, “Enjoy!”, walked out and shut the doors. I’ve never heard reproduced music with such presence, and so natural. I just couldn’t stop. I sat there for two hours playing track after track. Unfortunately, I do not know what the electronics were, but whatever they were there was an incredible synergy that I’d not heard before. Here’s how good that afternoon was: my wife was with me, and she sat there the whole time and never asked if we could leave. I don’t know if she heard what I heard, but without me having to say a word, she knew I was having “a moment”. There’s one or two more, but for me the significance of those experiences is that those events were good enough to make me continue to chase high end sound for 40+ years. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to afford the equipment that I’d like to have, but I have landed on a system that I’m very happy with, and it currently includes Martin Logan speakers. 

@hilde45 No problem with explaining my perspective.  You state that when you listen - both musically and critically (to the equipment) - they are both ultimately related to getting the most out of the music.  There is no separation, just a shift in relative focus, and the balance between the two varies and is transient.  That is your personal reality.  You also identify three endpoints of "involvement types", which include the person in it just for the music, just for sound reproduction, and just for their appreciation of the equipment (I prefer envisioning that endpoint as a curator of audio history rather than a status seeker, but it could be either/both). In any case, at the extreme, two out of three of those endpoints do not have that dynamic balance between musical listening and technical listening - in fact one has neither.  You could plot all positions on a triangular graph with the three axes being endpoints.  That is the "general" characterization, and there are positions on that graph that don't necessarily involve musical appreciation.  

This conversation is going way too far into the theoretical! I enjoy the theoretical, but let's get back to listening to our systems (and hopefully appreciating the music!).  Best, Peter