Mistakes are the only real teacher

You have to make mistakes to learn. That is how humans work, not algorithms. I say it as someone who has made plenty of them and paid for each one.

I have spent over $150,000 on audio equipment in the last ten years, an amount I never planned to. I have paired $30,000 of speakers with the wrong amplifier and wondered why they sounded hollow. I have bought things I later realised made no audible difference.

Everyone has an angle. The influencers need your clicks, the dealers and the manufacturers are selling, and for the sceptics everything is a scam. I took something from all of them, but none of them could make my mistakes for me.

So I will say it plainly: I can't always trust my own ears. I have been wrong. That admission is not a weakness in someone who gives opinions; it is the only thing that makes the rest of them worth hearing.

Learn from my mistakes if you can. You will still make your own, and you should.