I'd rather not get into specifics.
Let's just say that before discovering the light of Audio objectivism, I was claiming with pride that I would not invest in any single component costing
over $20,000. At that time what I considered as the best combo that I heard, was a CD playing system was about $15,000 for the transport and as much for the DAC ... Of course It could be had for less than MSRP
.. I also pride myself of never paying MSRP ...
I lusted for a speaker whose cabinet, was made of metal that cost $40,000...
I have invested quite bit in speakers, cables ( yes
), preamplifiers, amplifiers, DACs, headphones, One of the preamp I loved was less than $20K of course .. Same with the amp ... err ...amps...
Thing is, I have a remnant of those times, a headphone tube amplifier that cost multiple of the Atom I now use... Let's be charitable and say that the Atom wipe the floor with it, the tubed one couldn't drive the HifiMan HE560 well let alone the HE6. And my current DAC is the $99 Khadas Tne Board.. which likely would wipe the floor with the $15,000 DAC ... as it did with the Total Crap ....err .. DAC.
As for music buying , I spent a few years acquiring CDs .. Get to have a sizable collection .. Until I discovered Amazon used CDs... which made me buy more CDs..
thus I have more than 3000 CDs ... Then I discovered streaming. I now spend about $30 /month (Tidal and Spotify) to listen to several lifetimes of music ... If it weren't for the deep-seated audiophilia inside of me , I would drop Tidal too but ... It is fun to
know that you are listening to lossless ... and one has to have some fun...
I do believe that sites such as ASR will revive the hobby, I noticed a 21 years old person introducing him or herself recently, on this forum. The message must be carried to these youths that it is possible to obtain accurate reproduction of the signal in one's room for a relatively modest cash outlay.... $500 can provide a headphone system of the highest level of accuracy... e.g Topping D10 + Atom + HifiMan He400i or even a good sounding if not full range speaker-based one ... Say something like a pair of JBL LSR 305 with some decent motherboard DAC ... or even smartphone ... Contrast this with websites calling $10,000 (wildly inaccurate speakers at that) "entry-level" ... If you were to browse these websites, webzines. magazines or fora.. You would come to think that good sound begins at $50,000 for the system.. Such is not the case as many of these $100,000 system can be surpassed by a carefully assembled $5000 system, let's not talk about a apir of Active speakers such as the D&D 8c, Kii, Genetec, JBL , etc ... Of course the JBL LSR 305 will sound even better with a $1000 power cord NOT!.. NOT! I'm joking
Peace and hope more youth join the hobby.