The combination of SR1a and the Vérité, along with the Stellia (and now the Vérité Closed) have, per this thread, upended my setup significantly and are also responsible for a change in my attitude towards the hobby-aspects of the headphone/personal audio world in a similar vein.
For one, I’ve massively downsized my collection of cans and gear. Playing with new stuff is always fun - in its own way - and it has been fascinating to see how far things have come on the less-expensive side of things (the raw performance, objective or subjective, of a Modi 3/Atom/HD6XX combination would have been hard to get at all a few years ago, much less for under $400 total).
BUT … continually playing with new gear, at all points on the price/performance spectrum, comes at the cost of much less time spent listening with my best/favorite gear, which eats into the ultimate level of enjoyment I get from the primary purpose of all of this … enjoying the music.
The practical upshot of which is that I am highly unlikely to bother even listening to new gear, much less writing about it or reviewing it, unless there is a very good chance that it is either an upgrade to my current setup, will replace one or more things I already have, or is new/sufficiently different to warrant adding to my system.
And at present, it’s a very short list of “maybe” items (nothing that’s actually shipping today, and in fact nothing that even will necessarily make it to market) that’s even a candidate for the above.
Funny place to find oneself after the last seven years, but quite a welcome one too!