I would bet most of us have some sort of extremes in our systems: the expensive interconnect, an external clock, isolation feet that cost as much as the product it is isolating, a USB regenerator.
And I'll further bet there are few among us that have only middle of the road products throughout.
Each of our systems are likely an amalgam of the gotta haves, the get bys, and the extremes.
Newcomers into the world of high-performance audio equipment often cross their eyes at the disparate collections of kit that make up our systems.
What I find intriguing are the choices we make and the value judgments we place on differing aspects of our systems. Some move to the extremes with cartridge, tonearm, and tables before making do with what follows. Others focus on speakers and fill in the blanks before it with what's leftover of the budget. Still others have invested heavily in their rooms, from wall treatments to trinkets and modifiers, to Schumman Resonators.
We all have some extreme we're willing to go to in the hopes of stepping up our system's performance. It's what we do in service to the music.
Extremes define the edges.
Where have you set your boundaries?
