Many of audio enthusiasts or so called audiophiles start early in their lives listening music and most of them started getting serious when they had a moment of ecstasy or spiritual openings by listening a specific song or albums of their favorite artists.
It is a thrilling experience or joy and had the moment and it can be addictive for sure! Others have had similar experiences with books, drugs or other forms of arts and audio enthusiasts had the experience through music.
Once he had the moment, he is hooked and want to repeat that experience over and over. However, it might not be possible. It is like trying to open an already opened door, a doorway passed through already. Whatever it was that was broken through that first time can be broken through only once, perhaps only at a certain time in life. You might still enjoy listening the music piece over and over but not to the same degree as the first time.
It is because we come to it with ears and impression of itself that is now permanently there to receive it, to some degree, already been shaped and molded.
In audio as in music as in life; we spend ever more on audio gear, and on constant upgrades, in an attempt to re-enact a breakthrough first made while listening to a car radio or a primitive dorm-room system.
It is important to remember that it certainly wasn't the quality of the gear that made that breakthrough possible. It was something in the music, in ourselves, in the times.
It couldn't have happened without the sound, and the quality of that sound was important, too. We are not saying that such breakthroughs can never happen again, - they can.
But none of us is now the same person he or she was then, and they won't happen because we are listening to better gear than we were last year. They will happen not because measuring & improving the signal to the lowest distortion or upgrading better quality audio gears all the time but when we have opened our hearts without preparing anything in our mind but let it just happen.
Happy listening.