Getting back on track...

What hobbies I've had would be a more appropriate question.

When I was much younger, I loved astronomy and hiking.

In my twenties, I loved playing chess. I lived a breathed chess every moment of every day until I got very good. Then my interest began to dwindle. I also loved riding my motorcycle and eventually began souping them up. That lasted until I realized that there were other people with more money doing the same thing, so I was priced out of the competition. I also realized that in the real world (on the street), one or two seconds in the quarter really didn't add up to much. It was fun for a while.

Then I started traveling on motorcycle and by car. I got to see most of the U.S. I also went overseas. That was enjoyable until everywhere I went began looking the same. For me, lounging around a swimming pool at a resort was a fate worse than death. The trip to my destination was everything.

At the beginning of the 80's computers became the thing to do. At first, programming was my greatest joy, but then computers began to evolve their hardware and OS systems at a rate that was impossible to keep up with. I was not happy with the machines coming on the market or the companies that made and supported them, so I began building them myself. Every new computer I built was a thing of joy that blew the socks off of everything that came before. It didn't take me long to realize that my claim to fame only lasted about six months or so until the new generation of chips came around or someone would throw some nitrogen on their board so they could double their clock speeds. My latest computer runs 8 cores, uses SSD's in raid configuration, is overclocked by over 1GHz... but I realized that except for certain applications that I rarely use, it is loafing, almost all the time. So what's the point of having it?

Through all these years, my interest in audio has remained strong although my level of interest has vacillated from time to time. Music has always had a strong effect on me, both positive and negative. Oddly, the words in a song are not important. Voices are like instruments and that is what I hear.

I payed the price of joining the audio community by, for years, traveling west of the Mississippi to all the audio stores I could find and spending huge sums of cash chasing audio nirvana. In the end, all that gear is gone, my speakers are home brew and my amp can fit in my pocket. I couldn't be happier.

There were bumps in the road that detracted from the enjoyment of this hobby. Most of these bumps came from audio stores who's only interest was the size of your check book, naysayers that couldn't get past flawed DBT's and engineers that think measurement equipment can explain away the differences many of us hear.

The true enthusiasts, and the people who make this enjoyable, are the people who keep an open mind and try everything before commenting on it, these are audiophiles. In another category are the people who design and build their own equipment. To me, these people represent the highest level of what I call audiophiles. What people own or their level of knowledge is irrelevant to be considered an audiophile, IMO.

I've been reading many posts on this site since I've come back and feel I've gotten to know (in a limited way) some of the people here. I feel very humbled by the level of knowledge and the experience of many people that post here. What impresses me the most is, not someones equipment list, nor their background in the audio field, but the enthusiasm that reflects in their posts.