Since I am on a limited budget, I would never want to experience a system like that. Why? Because my own $1500 system would sound like crap from that moment on!

Yeah- I went through that when I worked at highend store while in college. My system was many times better than anyone I knew but it sounded like dirt after what I'd be demoing. Eventually I sort of made peace with it, but it took a while!

The secret is to not listen to the same music for a couple of days afterwards or to use different music for demoing than you listen to for pleasure.

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Since I am on a limited budget, I would never want to experience a system like that. Why? Because my own $1500 system would sound like crap from that moment on!

My buddy owns a DCS stack (Verdi, Purcell, Elgar), feeding Mac MC501 amps and JM Lab Nova Utopia BE speakers. He runs MIT Oracle interconnects and some crazy ass speaker wire. His system sings. It's better than almost every system I've ever heard. It's terrific. Never the less, when I come home and I turn on my own system, my flawed, my cheaper system, I am carried away by the sound, by the music. My friend's system is by far superior, but that doesn't mean that I don't enjoy mine even with all its flaws.

As long as your system sings, you can still sit back and float away and experience that musical nirvana. A system doesn't have to be perfect to be totally enjoyable.

As long as your system sings, you can still sit back and float away and experience that musical nirvana. A system doesn't have to be perfect to be totally enjoyable.

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Right on.

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The true quest for audio Nirvanha just involves spending HUGE amounts of cash and it's that simple.

No its not that simple. There is this risk that you can spend a bundle and sound no better than a budget system.
Ask this person how much he has spent to get to where he is now as well as how long it took him to get there.

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Its the journey not the destination.

If you must know some never get there and never will.

Alex: i am with you on this. i recently went to a mac demo that featured their $35k speakers and those giant 1.2kilo amps that made the lamps dim. it was awesome and great to experience some of the best that audio now has to offer. all told, it was probably about $60k more than i have in my little system. but, i feel that i have a pretty good rig that i have carefully put together without busting my bank account. my system sounds very, very good on acoustic instruments and vocals, smaller amplified groups, piano and jazz. it is not so great on large scale rock groups such as pink floyd, but enjoyable none the less. the mac system i heard did it all with aplomb. i guess that spending that kind of money means you get to make less compromises with your music. the rest of us can pick equipment that highlights the style of music we prefer. by the way, at that demo was another room with these little focal monitor speakers, mac 275 amps and a mac solid state preamp (usually the opposite of conventional thinking for a hybrid system). what those little monitors did was even more impressive to me than that $70k system for the money. not in absolute terms, but the tight control in the bass was unbelieveable, in fact, speakers that size had no right to sound so deep and controlled. i am sure they run out of breath at the highest volumes, but sheesh, to that point, incredible. it totally blew away my prejudice against small speakers.
personally, i enjoy learning new things about the hobby and can reconcile myself to having the best i can reasonably afford.

tom

You know, funny enough it took a LOT more effort to make my friend's system sing than it did to make mine sing. His system sounded dull and lifeless for a long time. It took us trying 27 different cables until his system started to sing. I thought that DCS stack was overrated and I suggested getting rid of it and getting something else. He stuck to the DCS and I guess it paid off, but he wound up spending about $9k on cables before it came alive.