Ritz2, you've undergone a radical transformation from analog tube to totally digital. I know only one local audiophile who's done that and it was because he became so tired of caring for records and stylii and the hassle of pulling out a record, putting it on his TT and carefully lowering the tonearm, etc, all for a few minutes of music. Maybe the transformation is part of the aging process.
Time and technology march on. Who's got the time and energy to care for tube gear anymore?
My take is that if you pay enough attention to the amp/speakers and have components in the signal path that aren't egregiously noisy, it's hard for most people to tell the difference. Caving in to the room correction aspect was a slow process. I'd been "sold" on it long ago with a friend's TaCT gear, but it was always just outside of my budgetary threshold of pain. The improvements were obvious, even to the most casual listener. However, until recently, I hadn't heard another system that was able to accomplish that. In the last year or so, I started fiddling with Audyssey MultEQ XT after winning a Denon AVR as an office door prize. It just plain worked. Then, after some discussion here, I auditioned an AVR with MultEQ XT32. It also just plain worked. Color me a convert to room correction. It's now affordable enough that I don't think I'd ever buy an AVR/Processor without it.
Like I said, I'll be curious to see how well it sells, even if it isn't something that I would personally buy. (Lots of people buy iPhones and I don't like 'em)
Best,
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