Ever heard of a hedonic treadmill?

The idea is simple: we adapt to improvements. Something that thrilled us becomes the new normal, and we return to roughly the same level of satisfaction we had before.

We audiophiles know this intimately.

You upgrade the DAC. The system opens up, sounds more detailed and alive, and for a few weeks you're genuinely delighted. Then your ears recalibrate. The improvement becomes the baseline. What was revelatory is now simply what your new standard is (and should be!).

I don't think this is a flaw. I think it's how what we love to do actually works, and understanding it is more useful than stressing over it. 

Each improvement does make the music more available to you — more detail, more presence, more of what the recording contains. The fact that you eventually stop marveling at it doesn't mean the improvement wasn't real.

Your ears adapted because they were hearing something better.

And that's part of the joy of it all. When a new album genuinely moves me on the new system, I'm not thinking about the next component I am simply swooning over what I hear, anxious for the next dose of musical discovery.

We can define and examine all the mechanics of why this or that worked but, at the end of the day, we're just happy when we can bring the magic of music home.