I was recently reminded that I’ve been living with and listening through my ADAM A3X desktop speakers for about 12 years. Twelve years and I never think about upgrading.
Why? Because they are satisfyingly good. Are there better active/powered desktop speakers? Of course! ADAM offers bigger, better, and more costly speakers and back in the day when I reviewed desktop speakers for AudioStream, I can still remember how much more exciting, full bodied, and refined the Focal Professional Solo6 Be were/are (current price $1499/each) than my smaller ADAMs ($329/each at the time of review in 2012). But that doesn’t matter one bit because every time I play music through the A3X I only think about the music.
Sure, I could have been thinking about how much better the Focals were/are instead of enjoying music for those same 12 years but what the hell would be the point in that?
“I own the best speakers in the world!” So what? What in the world does that matter to me or anyone other than you?
This obsession with “the Best” strikes me as nothing more than an ego-driven distraction from reality because the wonderful shining beauty of hifi is what matters most is the fact that any hifi that’s used to enjoy music is the best hifi. And the more we listen, the better our hifis get.
My ADAM A3X are the best desktop speakers in world—for me—12 years running. And “for me” is all that counts even though I liked the Focal Professional Solo6 Be more. How can that be?
Music matters most. [footnote 1]
Listening to music is not a competition unless you choose to make it so. In which case I guarantee you’ll never be satisfied. On the other hand, if you love listening to music through your hifi and only wish you had more time to listen to more music, you already own the best. Even if there’s better.
1. I’ve been saying essentially this same thing for 12 years. See Why Music Matters Most
“Let’s redefine high fidelity as being faithful to the passion for and discovery of music. This means that the best hi-fi is the one that perpetually fans the flame of this passion.”