During a recent interview with Srajan Ebaen of 6-Moons, he made the observation that many accomplished musicians have rather mediocre stereo gear. Gear that by most audiophiles standards would be considered mid-fi at best. His explanation was basically that musicians play a participatory role in the experience of music. They only need a guideline or sketch of the music to recreate it in their minds which explains why when offered hi-end stereo gear to replace their mid-fi components most showed little if any interest.
The point of all this is that during a human beings shift from discovering music as a child to becoming a seasoned audiophile, the participatory or imaginative process employed when enjoying music when you were young (regardless of sound quality) is gradually replaced with expensive audiophile gear. Srajan accurately points out that this attempt at substitution does not work. What it does do is create restlessness in audiophiles while they passively wait for their wonder gear to get them off on command. This is the reason why audiophiles constantly go through different gear in that never ending search for something that they used to have as a child, or can only find at a live concert hall.
