Just one of those things that hit me lately.
I was sitting in the family room last week, looking at my equipment. Then it strikes me.... when did I last fire up my system? It's been at least a month..... maybe two. Maybe longer? Lack of time is not an excuse as I'm retired and have the house to myself around 6 hours a day .
So.....what gives?
My 25 year old self owned 'lesser' equipment but I was always listening. Fast forward 40 years, and even with having upgraded equipment and more source material..... not so much. In fact not much at all.
Like many others my hearing has gone downhill somewhat. But in spite of that I can still listen to a system and hear subtle changes, differences between tubes, cables, hell even power cords. So bad hearing isn't an excuse.
Now this is not saying that I'm lacking music in my life. For whatever reason, most of the time, I have music playing in my head. Sometimes things I've heard, other times music that my brain seems to have created. Sometimes a mix of the two. Occasionally it's so prevalent that I can't 'shut it off' and get to sleep. It's playing as I type this.
It's really got me thinking. If the newer (to me) and better equipment is not increasing my desire to listen or my listening enjoyment, maybe I'd be better off selling a bunch and dropping back to the level I owned back in my 20s?
Back in the 80's and 90's I had a nice system with ESS AMT 1B monitors bi-amped with a Hitachi Class G 200 WPC amp for the woofers and Hitachi 100WPC Mosfet for the tweets. The low end amp blew a channel back around 2000 and I just threw it in the trash, no questions asked (yeah, that was a mistake). I still have the rest, except for the speakers, but have also acquired all sorts of seventies separates since those days. I will swap them out from time to time.
I still use th ol' turntable, and amps which run a pair of mini-Advents I picked up at an estate sale, and a KLH subwoofer I picked up at Costco for $99. I blew it's 10" speaker but had an old 10" PA speaker laying around and it seems to work fine. And this whole setup sounds just fine to me.
No, I didn't suddenly have to sell anything. I just got out of what we musicians call "GAS" (Gear Acquisition Syndrom). I'm 64 now, and really don't need to have the absolute best Hi-Fi now. In fact, a good analogy of what has happened to me is what happened with my Scion FR-S. I put the stickiest street legal tires on it I could find and am driving 150 miles every workday, about half of it on beautifully maintained backroad twisties. And I don't even think about cops, if you get my drift. I've been through seven sets of tires in my 142,000 miles, but have yet to replace the factory brakes.
But all the drifting, etc. has just gotten boring. I just want to enjoy the scenery more than enjoy the driving. I've mentally moved on. Give me an old chevy that is reliable and gets good gas mileage and I'll be happy. I know, because sometimes I drive my first gen Scion xB with severe deer damage to work and it's absolutely fine.
And the same thing has happened to me with hi-fi. I've just sort of lost most (but not all) of my inner audiophile and am more into what music/sound is being played through it, rather than the quality of the system itself. As one ages, priorities change. And frankly, I've always been one to really get into a hobby and eventually move on. It never goes away. It just becomes something I enjoy for myself in a deeper, and less flamboyant way. This includes:
Car racing
Bicycling
Softball
Photography
Bass playing
Hi fi
Motorcycling
All of those things have been the single most important extra-curricular activity in my life at any given time, and eventually became less important, but never fully went away - and never will until I stop breathing. I think you are experiencing the first hint of it regarding Hi-fi.