$40,000 of sunk cost in my own head

I am biased. You are biased. I will start with mine, because it has a price tag of $40,000.

That is the extra I spent moving from my McIntosh integrated to the C12000 and the MC611 monoblocks. My dealer warned me I would never go back. My friends called it overkill.

Now imagine someone tells me a $15,000 integrated sounds identical. My brain physically resists that information. I need my purchases to be justified, and that is the sunk cost fallacy, sitting in my own listening chair. It does not mean the difference is not there; it means I am the worst judge of it.

Naming it is the only defence I have. I still believe what I heard from the very first song, and I still call it the point of no return. But I hold that belief knowing the bias is in the room with me. I would rather tell you than pretend a man with $40,000 on the rack is neutral about it.

The difference between an honest audiophile and a deluded one isn't what they hear. It's whether they are willing to question it.