Yes, I’m in the same boat with my friends not sharing an interest in audio equipment, and my dad - who’s also no longer with us - loved his two-channel setup. I wish he’d been around to hear my decent headphones (and my HD 800 SDR, in particular). I wonder what he would have made of them. In any case, it is a pleasure to have this forum for sharing our interests. I’ll add my thanks to everyone, too.
Re. taking a gentle cruise and not spending more than you can afford: while saving up separately for upgrades, I’m also thinking of sacrificing my LCD2-Classic to create a ca. $500 slush fund so as to be able to experiment a bit more. The idea is to cycle through a bunch of used “benchmark” audio gear (as per this thread) while avoiding incurring too much of a loss when re-selling items, and ultimately gaining a wider frame of reference and more experience in the hobby. So far I’m contemplating using such funds for test-driving early pre-fazor LCD 2 headphones, a pair of HD 600, the Lyr 3, Asgard 3, among others. (Suggestions would be most welcome!)
This could allow to try out stuff until such time as we can start organizing meets again…