Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater It seems to me that we're all 'addicts'!!!

You know, while reading some of the latest threads going right now it suddenly dawned on me out of nowhere really that we here are all addicted to our HT systems in almost exactly the same way a dope head is addicted to drugs. We are all just looking for that 'little bit more' that we think is going to satisfy us once and for all. But just like a junkie... we're never going to find that peak, we're always going to keep looking for that unattainable ultimate high!

Take for instance my first crack at HT... I had a 36 inch television, and an Aiwa 5.1 bookshelf speaker system. And I tell you what, I thought I was the freaking SHIT!!! Having all those sounds swirling around my head during movies, damn did I ever think it sounded great! Then when I moved my HT down into my basement I had more money to spend, and a bigger area to fill with sound effects. So I went and dumped 7 grand into my new HT including a $3500 dollar 65 inch rear projection TV, a $2000 dollar Denon reciever, and $1500 dollars total wrapped up in a 9.1 surround sound speaker system. And if I thought I was the man before, buddy I thought I was Conan the Barbarian... king of all men, slayer of gigantic snakes and love maker to all women with this set-up!!!

But when the fire destroyed that system my dreams grew even bigger! Now I have close to $10,000 dollars wrapped up in my current HT system, and although it easily sounds 100 times better than anything I've ever owned to date, I'm still drooling over the thought of getting a new reciever ($1000 bucks minimum), a BD player ($500 for the Oppo), and an outboard amplifier ($600 to $1000 bucks depending on what I end up getting) so that I can watch movies in 1080p, enjoy the new lossless audio formats, and really hammer out earth quaking musical notes through the superb M80's!!! Oh and I haven't finished getting speakers yet either. I currently have a 5.1 channel system, and from the very beginning I've planned on having 6 total QS8's to round out the same 9.1 system I had previously. So I have another $1000 dollars worth of speakers to buy as well.

So $3500 dollars later, will I finally be satisfied? Will I no longer dream of upgrading my HT to achieve bigger and better results? Are you kidding? I am convinced that no matter how much money I throw into this passion, there will always be something else coming down the pike that I'll want. Just to see if it can make my experience THAT much better.

A good example is Grunt talking about his Audyssey experiments. I'm sure Grunts HT sounds awesome just the way it is. I'm sure he loves listening to music and watching movies on it as much as anyone enjoys their HT system. He's tried the Audyssey out, and found he prefered his set-up better without it. But he's still planning on getting a new microphone to see if he can't tweek it out until it sounds that much better than what he has now. Why? Why are we so addicted to endlessly fiddling with our systems when we are already so happy with the way they sound? You would think after owning my Axioms for a month, and being so completely amazed with how well they sound each time I play music or plop a movie in, that I would be able to just enjoy it the way it is, at least for a little while... But I can't. All I can think about is how much better it will sound when I can play the lossless formats through them. And how much fuller the room will fill with music when I have 9 speakers to pump the sound out at me along with the sub. Now when I say I can't I don't mean I don't enjoy my HT, I just mean I can't help but wonder what it's going to sound like next.

Will it ever end? I'm convinced it won't. And I guess that is how my brain prefer's it anyway. As blown away with the way that little Aiwa system sounded years and years ago, it knew there had to be something even better out there. And indeed I have certainly found it. Now that I have a truely worthy system to reproduce sounds with, the advances become smaller and smaller. There aren't any huge leaps to be made anymore, only fine tuning to get it just 'a little bit more' better. And I suppose with the yearly advances in technology, I will never run out of new things to try to make it finally be that ultimate system my ears wishes to hear... but that my mind will never let it fully achieve.

JohnK is the only sensible one among us.

Sensiblility is a characteristic of the weak!!!

Good muse Micah. The difference between this sickness and drug addiction is that not only are we physically mentally addicted, as you have recognized, we want to be addicted!

It is all just a social experiment in diminishing marginal returns. It takes more and more cash to get that next little noticeable change.

But the new 120" screen for the 1080p projector was a nice bit of bang for ye ole buck!

"Monster cable is wack!"

The founder of Monster Cable should be wacked with one.

Thats what hobbies are all about. A Blu-ray player and a good pair of headphones was the last piece to the puzzle for me. I probably won't have an urge to do anything for quite sometime.

I am about ready take a plunge into a new hobby anyways that will drain the wallet pretty quickly and kill any funds for audio/video related purchases.

Welcome to the wonderful world of boating. :P Isnt it?

I think Micah has a point though, we are all always looking at ways that we might improve some aspect of our HT. In my case I spent about 6K on speakers, AVR and Blu-ray player and a few other accessories. I get it all set up and have been playing with it for about a month now and while it sounds fantastic I know it could sound even better in the right environment. Our HT room is oddly shaped and accousically challenged, just too many windows and hard surfaces. So over the weekend I suggested to my wife that we add on a dedicated HT room. In hindsight I probably should have waited a couple of months before making that suggestion. Whether it is improving your accoutics, your video quality, or adding more music to your library there are always going to be improvements to you system. Picking the right time to get the WAF is the key to success.