I wonder what it's like to never feel the need to upgrade.
My sub can make the room shake like an earthquake and yet I still want to upgrade.
It feels great. I have a pair of old
SVS CS-Ultra subwoofers, and I never plan on upgrading. The fact that there are better subwoofers available now does not bother me. If that kind of thing bothers one, one will always be bothered, because it is always possible to get better (something massive and custom made could always be done better than anything done yet, so this will always be true). I also have no plans on ever upgrading my home theater speakers (
Aurum Cantus Leisure 2SE [original U.S. version]), and will likely be able to use my current receiver until it dies, though it is always possible that I will decide I need some new feature there, so I am not holding my breath. But with my speakers, any improvement would be small and very expensive, so it simply isn't worth it to me. I would have to come into a vast fortune to want to upgrade (and even then I might not bother), or they would have to come up with some new breakthrough in speaker technology to tempt me. I do, however, want to upgrade to a bigger TV, and that is not as nice a feeling as being satisfied with what one has.
For my main 2 channel stereo, I use
Apogee Stage speakers, and I feel no need of upgrading them ever. They are great speakers, though they are a bother to set up properly. In fact I expect to never upgrade any part of my main 2 channel stereo unless some part fails. That feels nice.
It also saves quite a bit of money if one can manage to save up and buy something that one will find satisfying over time. Constantly upgrading usually means constantly spending money, and if one skips just one of the steps in the upgrade process, one can save quite a lot of money. (By that I mean, if one buys item A, replaces it with item B, which is then replaced with item C, usually, one will save a significant amount of money if one never buys B, and simply skips that one and goes straight from A to C.) If one skips them all and just goes to the top of what one will ever want first, one saves the most money. I did not do that, but I have tried very hard to get gear that will be satisfying in the long run, and it does save quite a lot of money when one keeps gear for a long time rather than constantly buying new gear to replace what one is not quite satisfied with. To put this another way, one can have better gear for the same total amount of money spent if one saves up and just buys what is ultimately satisfying first, rather than wasting money on intermediate steps in a constant upgrade process.
The exception to the idea that constantly upgrading costs money is when one buys used gear that one finds at a good price that is low enough that one can resell it for as much or more than one pays, in which case it just takes time and bother to do many steps of upgrades. But with buying new gear, typically one is not going to be able to sell it for what one pays, and so it will involve a loss of money, money that could have been put into better gear instead of into constantly upgrading.
I think if a lot of people were to calculate all that they have spent over the years on all of their upgrading (they would need accurate records for this, and would also subtract from the total cost the various amounts they got reselling their old gear), they may be shocked at how much they have spent, and be surprised by how little they have to show for it in their current gear. Or to say the same thing in other words (since people online often misunderstand things), the total amount of money that they spent on audio gear is likely to be far more than the retail value of their current collection of gear. Which means, if they had just saved up for good stuff in the first place, they could have purchased better gear than they currently have for the same amount of money they have spent. Or they could have what they currently have, and have money left over.
