Edward Mott Robinson (above), a Quaker tycoon from whaling-era Massachusetts, would turn down fine cigars. He preferred the cheap kind. "I smoke four-cent cigars, and I like them," he declared (footnote 1). "If I were to smoke better ones, I might lose my taste for the cheap ones that I now find quite satisfactory."
Robinson wasn't so much guarding his palate as preserving his contentment. A simple pleasure had settled into place, untroubled by ambition, and he knew to leave it alone.
I think about Robinson's four-cent stogie sometimes, usually when someone asks whether a $10,000 integrated amplifier really sounds five times better than a $2000 one. (Answer: No, it doesn't.) Or whether hearing a $12,000 DAC will ruin you for the $1000 unit you used to love. (My take: Very possibly.)
Better is hard to forget. Upgrading your gear often reveals new layers of beauty and nuance, but it also shifts your baseline. Yesterday's "Wow!" becomes today's "meh."
So we climb—not necessarily getting to seventh heaven, but quickly forgetting what felt like enough only yesterday. We chase sparkle and resolution like a cat stalks a laser dot. We lurch from amplifier to amplifier in search of the One True Timbre. The most wretched among us—the terminal tweakers, engineers of their own discontent—don't even want to reach the summit. For them, it's about staying in motion. The hunt becomes its own pyrrhic reward.
Up the ladder, down the rabbit hole
My friend Justin, who I wrote about last year in a Stereophile column I called "(Un) healthy Obsessions", has never gotten off of the hedonic treadmill. His system evolves faster than many viruses. He sometimes declares he's done then tells me weeks later, in a tone that fuses excitement with the latent fear of regret, about his new subwoofer, or an amplifier with an even higher signal-to-hype ratio—or is it the other way 'round?
Curiosity is human. Beauty is worth unearthing. But the quest falls apart when discovery turns into second-guessing. Often it is worsened by the quiet nausea of having spent too much for too little. In audiophile circles, we believe refinement is virtuous, that our systems should always inch us closer to revelation. The imperative to upgrade whispers in our ear with the breathy voice of a dealer on commission. We give in and expect happiness. But in raising the bar, expectations make anything less feel like failure. Suddenly, without our explicit consent, what used to be a luxury has become a requirement.
Audiophiles aren't the only ones who fall into this trap. You see it in fine wine, luxury watches, and the endless churn of pro camera gear (typically among amateur photographers). The trouble isn't the pursuit but the erosion of delight.
Inevitably, spiritual traditions have tried to put guardrails on yearning. Buddhists claim that desire is the root of suffering. The Bible rejects it outright: Thou shalt not covet. (That commandment always seemed a bit rich coming from a book that bans eyeing your neighbor's ox but tempts you with milk, honey, and divine favor.) Desire, I think, is mostly good. It's how we stretch, innovate, and improve. But yes, it's also how we end up three DACs deep, Googling cryo-treated fuse holders at 2am and realizing the music has stopped.
Down on upgrades
"Constant craving," k.d. lang sang on Ingénue, "has always been." We can't kill it; it's baked in, wired into our biology, honed by evolution. But we can try to keep it from turning our listening rooms into places we don't actually enjoy. My friend Kai is good at this. I recently spent an afternoon at his place. He owns a relatively modest system, but it's put together with love and care: a Marantz 6006 CD player, a Willsenton R8 integrated amp, and a pair of used Monitor Silver 50 standmounts that cost less than my speaker cables. Kai doesn't read the audio forums, doesn't track new product releases, and doesn't keep a wish list. He finds gear he likes and calls it good. What a concept. We drank coffee and listened to Chet Baker play "Blue Thoughts" while rain drummed the roof. Nothing felt like a compromise. The music had body. The dynamics were intact. There was no parsing of decay trails. Just lovely, aching notes, quietly shared and appreciated.
That evening, standing in front of my far fancier setup, I wondered whether somewhere along the way I'd gotten closer to the music or further from the joy that first pulled me in. Does refinement eventually stop adding joy? At what point?
I thought of Edward Mott Robinson. He wasn't just being thrifty. He knew that to keep his satisfaction, he had to walk away from the thing that would break it.
Often, it's not the thrill of newness but the comfort of familiarity that keeps pleasure intact. Sometimes it's best to stop evaluating sound and let the music arrive. Don't test it, don't chase it, just let it in. That's where contentment lives, hiding in plain sight.
Footnote 1: See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetty_Green.
My friend Justin, who I wrote about last year in a Stereophile column I called "(Un) healthy Obsessions", has never gotten off of the hedonic treadmill. His system evolves faster than many viruses. He sometimes declares he's done then tells me weeks later, in a tone that fuses excitement with the latent fear of regret, about his new subwoofer, or an amplifier with an even higher signal-to-hype ratio—or is it the other way 'round?
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Down on upgrades"Constant craving," k.d. lang sang on Ingénue, "has always been." We can't kill it; it's baked in, wired into our biology, honed by evolution. But we can try to keep it from turning our listening rooms into places we don't actually enjoy. My friend Kai is good at this. I recently spent an afternoon at his place. He owns a relatively modest system, but it's put together with love and care: a Marantz 6006 CD player, a Willsenton R8 integrated amp, and a pair of used Monitor Silver 50 standmounts that cost less than my speaker cables. Kai doesn't read the audio forums, doesn't track new product releases, and doesn't keep a wish list. He finds gear he likes and calls it good. What a concept. We drank coffee and listened to Chet Baker play "Blue Thoughts" while rain drummed the roof. Nothing felt like a compromise. The music had body. The dynamics were intact. There was no parsing of decay trails. Just lovely, aching notes, quietly shared and appreciated.
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Footnote 1: See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetty_Green.
