It seems like someone took a different route. See quote below. He is / was an outlaw.

“Some years back I was up to my neck in "high end" gear. I had spent tens of thousands of dollars on a setup of Mark Levinson electronics (not including all the swap-outs and "upgrades" that got me to that point), and I was on a never-ending search for the next tweak or upgrade that would take my system to the next level.
One night, while I was setting up a new preamp (along with some spendy boutique cables), I sat there and asked myself "What the hell am I doing?" I'd gotten into the "hobby" because of my love for music, but I'd gotten so obsessed with the performance of the system that I rarely ever listened to a CD "just to enjoy the music". The music was just a way to measure this-or-that aspect of the system's performance.
The next day I boxed everything up and listed it on Audiogon.”