This is solid advice - keep your eyes on the prize but be nimble enough to take advantage of any opportunities that come up along the way. Buy once, Crye once as some of my friends used to say.
I’m currently fighting off GAS and FOMO (get behind me ZMF Hot Cup Summer!) by systematically evaluating my own musical and sound signature preferences.^ To quote Harry Calahan, “A good man always knows his limitations.”
The steps I’m taking are as follows:
- Building a playlist of test tracks that capture the diversity of the music I listen to, and using this playlist to try out the various pieces of equipment (DACs, amps, headphones, and IEMs) I currently own. There’s a good thread on this topic.
- Logging how all of the equipment performs according to that playlist. The easiest person you can fool is yourself so you’ll need a way to keep yourself honest.
- Identifying whether or not the equipment I own is good enough. If it isn’t asking why and am I willing to make the effort/spend the money to obtain better equipment.
- Not forgetting what it is that I’m seeking to do, which is to have the best music-listening experience possible given a compromise between price, sound, physical comfort, reliability, customer service, labor relations, and environmental costs.
Regards,
Vic
^ Keep in mind that just because an item is reviewed highly doesn’t mean you should buy it, especially if the reviewer has a separate set of values than you (the same goes if it is rated poorly). Also question the motivation behind the review - is ego, money or material benefits, reputation, and/or community reputation involved, and if so, how much will that shape the review? Are they being controversial just to be controversial? Is their criticism warranted, or is their reasoning unsound because the argument is based upon a set of unexamined, incorrect assumptions and why are they going forth with it? Bluntly - What’s in it for them?