parkergetdean, no, if I meant you, I would have said so. I took the opportunity to discuss an aspect of the hobby that impacts many and few wish to discuss, as though it is taboo.
I spoke from experience, as I was once a thrifty audiophile. so I know the internal conversation that revolves around money and the hobby.
I discuss in my book, The Audiophile Laws, how thriftiness is a hindrance to building a better system. With zero condescension to budget audiophiles, as I was one for over a decade, when budget rules the day in audiophilia, the hobbyist should not think that they are making a system that approaches SOTA. There is a great deal of delusion in this hobby, where some people who put relatively little into the system, given the spectrum of equipment and cost, proclaim they have something extraordinary. (I haven't even looked at your system details, so please don't think I am targeting you.)
Such people are guilty of judging show systems harshly, with comments such as, "My system at home is better than all those at the show." It's nothing more than pride and arrogance, given that they may have never had such equipment in their home. Without any direct comparison, they presume to judge the lot of higher end gear. That kind of sweeping statement is a result of money concerns dominating their discussion of all things audio. The comments are motivated by one overarching thing, money or thriftiness.They tend to judge sound not on the basis of absolute performance but on the basis of value of the product and performance. Of course, anything obviously superior suffers from diminishing returns, etc.
It costs a lot of money to get to SOTA performance. That's not a judgment against the budget limited hobbyist, it's just a fact. I would not have agreed with any of this had I not become a reviewer and proved to myself that many of the thrifty attitudes and conclusions I had drawn were simply wrong. :)
