2012, The Last Mile?

If the ancient Mayans are right, it's all coming to an end, come 21st December 2012! Repent and make peace with your loved ones, friends and the divined one, while you still can. Ha! Ha!

At this point in time, it would seem like the ancient Mayans had it all figured out like a few thousand years ago. The impending melt down of the global economy, the political up heavals facing many nations, the natural disasters that just hit countries like Japan, Thailand and New Zealand. 2012 has surely came with makings of the Hollywood blockbuster movie with the same year as it's tittle. It's not a good sign.

There's a lot of gloom and doom out there, but for us audiophiles and music lovers, there is always music for us to seek refuge, from the daily grind and chaos. Our obsession with hifi may not be able to distract us from all the uncertainties, but music has a calming effect.

I've been consuming much of my music while driving in the car, more than thru my hifi system actually(I drive around a lot). Looking back, by new year's eve 2011, my audio system has under gone much change, since the early days of Hifi-Unlimited blogging. Nearly every component in my hifi system, except for my power amp, has being replaced. Many have asked me recently about my dream hifi system, the one that I aspire to. I must say that if you'd just asked the same question a few years ago, my answer would surely be the very same equipments I have in my hifi system today. So my answer to my friend's inquiry would be this, "I already have all that I want, I am very satisfied with my hifi performance today, thanks for asking by the way".

Now before you accuse me of bragging, showing off and what nots, please allow me to clarify my position. My hifi system's performance is not perfect, far from it in fact! I do not live in an ivory tower. However for me, it has come to a point where my system's overall performance synergy has been equalised. It's a well rounded system that will please me on all musical forms and genre, within the constrains of my smallish 10 x 12ft room. Most gratifying of all, I have my very own little music making hole, to hide away from the worries of the troubled world facing us today!

I've come to realised too, that to make the next performance "Great Leap Forward" as Chairman Mao would say, will require me to start a whole new chain of hifi upgrades, again! That's not something I am really keen to do at this point in time. I shall take it slow and steady, and just enjoy the accumulated fruits of my labour. Since I already have my dream system, so to speak, I shall take time to maximise it's performance envelope instead, literally go for the last mile, with my existing components, plus a few tweaks perhaps?

In the mean time, don't let all the gloom and doom get you down, just be thankful for all that you have, no matter how insignificant, and make the best of it. After all hifi is just a pursuit of an ideal, an ideal of absolute sound. Now before you ask me what is "The Absolute Sound?". Don't get me started on that! Ha! Ha!

What I am trying to say is this, if you're reading this, hifi matters a lot obviously, and if for whatever reasons you're not too happy or quite satisfied with those in your possession now, it's not like it's "The end of the world" as we know it. Hey! The Mayans could be wrong after all!

And by the way, we'd be presenting our Best of 2011 gears very soon, do stay tune if you wanna know.

Happy New Year!