whats the biggest mistake you made?

I guess it was selling my Shanling CD-S100 MkII. A h**l of a player for the money, overbuilt in many ways. I was short of cash that month, no better reason--except that I thought I didn't deserve to have three sources I liked listening to.

I liked the Aurum Cantus Leisure 2 SE a lot too, but I really couldn't afford to keep those in my bedroom. I have a pair of Acoustic Energy Aegis Ones now that should be a nice step up from my old Titans.

Marco, I have TWO bottles of the '98 pebbles. I'll let one go but first I have to know whether your testicle will be packaged in brine or formaldehyde...

My biggest mistake was in taking the advise of others about what would make my system sound good!

My next biggest mistake was in not taking the advise of others about what would not make it sound good!

But its so hard to do this in a vacumm. :-)

I think this one might take the cake:

Last year I turned down a set of KRELL FPB-250M monoblocks and Krell KPS-25sc CD/Pre which I would have gotten for NOTHING. Yup, Nada, Zilch, Zero.

A very generous family member was getting a mid-life crisis system and getting rid of their previous mid-life crisis system (who knew you could have two) and my reasoning for refusing the gift at the time was that firstly, if you sold the combo at the time you would get more then if I sold it (I wasn't going to be able to use it for a year); secondly, to be honest I didn't love the sound of the krells, and the size of all the gear was pretty prohibitive considering my stand/apt; and thirdly, I thought the generous family member should recover some of the money they had spent (especially considering the cost of their new system) and I felt a little guilty owning such a nice system w/out doing anything to earn it.

The minute I heard the gear sold it was like getting the worst hangover ever!

Can someone tell me what the F I was thinking?

Well, the list is too long to mention here, but one sticks out. In a manic-depressive rage years ago, I smashed my Krell KAV-300 integrated to bits and took a baseball bat to my MB Quart speakers. My landlord, who was a really sweet guy, helped me clean up the mess, but never looked at me quite the same way again. Can't say I blamed him. Anyway, in a material sense, it was probably for the good, as I eventually replaced the gear with far better stuff, but it was clearly an idiotic thing to do, and very self-destructive. This was before I discovered effective meds, of course!