Despite having been slightly infected by the hi-fi bore virus some years ago, I did manage to resist the complete bollocks side where people are extoling the virtues of gold plated 13 amp plugs or whatever, I do appreciate good sound, and for many years vinyl (on a good system) easily surpassed CD on "enjoyability" of listening, even though the scratches weren't there. i bought my Linn a year or two after CDs started having doen a listening comparison - well it wasn't really a comparrison as it was so manifestly superior. These days, all my music is on the PC (in full CD format, not MP3 I might add) with the linn, rather regretably in a cardboard box. Not sure my flat is big enough if I had all my cd's on vinyl - for (so called) classical music there a so many very well priced boxed sets, and cd review on radio 3 seems to add a few more to the list each week. For all that, I still have my mission cyrus 2 amp, which still sounds good, and have recently bought some very large kef reference speakers from fleabay. They would have cost someone around £3k new apparenlty, and as I only paid a sixth of that , I find them astonishingly good. For all that, I am amazed how good basic pc on board sound is though - through the mission & kefs it is genuine hi-fi. i upgraded to a proper studio quality sound card and whilst I can hear the difference, there's really not much in it.
Still, a few years ago someone at work was emigrating and selling off his sme30 turntable and sme v arm for a couple of £k - now that would be something. i couldn't do it at the time, but would be hard to resist now, even though I've not got that many (proper) records.
Strangely though, many hi-fi enthusiasts don't seem to listen to music much, or had questionable taste at best. i remember my neighbour as a kid had quad gear, electrostatic speaker etc, and listened mainly to James Last !
Lots of bargains out there, and quad gear at least seems to be reasonably priced, and apparently upgradeable according to geekdom. Certainly my kef 105/3 speakers are a fantastic fleabay purchase
but it was the 1st stereo i'd bought with money i'd earned from my YTS... so maybe my first grown up purchase.
