A lot of summit fi or high end gear are not scams, they may actually be quantifiable/ subjectively better in a very small way… but the truth is almost 99% of those options terrible in price to performance value. And that’s exactly why they make them so expensive. They know the people buying them are either gear chasers, big wallet enthusiasts wanting to try the most refined audio listening experience using the best materials refined to increase performance by >.01%, or well off people who just want the “best.” But regrets depends on how you look at your emotional investment in the hobby.

For example, I’ve owned countless headphones low, mid, high tier. I recently went gear chasing looking for the ultimate sound and had utopias, lcd-5s, multiple zmf’s, heddphone, multiple Grados, and Dan Clark’s older ether flagship. Don’t forget countless hours researching and trying amp pairings. Out of all of those, the lcd-5s were, imo, the best daily driver for me after months of buying and selling. In the end I sold them all and now I only have an older black silk HD600 from 1996 with custom cans brass bass port mod and I’m quite happy to stay here at the moment.

So I have ‘regrets’ in the sense that I spent all this time, energy, and money looking for and having something truly special, yet in the end, the entire process made me realize that my hd600s were all that I really needed. They do something special regarding my subjective listening preferences while being 90% the performance of anything else above them. And this is my 4th time owning various iterations of the 600. But at the same time, going through through this ordeal has made me realize more of what I value most. The journey has been really fun, really agonizing, and I’m sure I’ll continue having waves of wanting more in the future.

I put off trying Grado for years due to the cable, build, sound preferences and stereotypes associated with them… then I said screw it, tried the rs1x, rs2x, and gs1000x and good god am I hooked on the 1000x. Currently saving and telling myself I don’t need it at the same time. Guess that’s the Grado magic.