A Four-Cent Cigar and the Tyranny of Better

Edward Mott Robinson, a Quaker tycoon from whaling-era Massachusetts, would turn down fine cigars. He preferred the cheap kind. “I smoke four-cent cigars, and I like them,” he declared.¹ “If I were to smoke better ones, I might lose my taste for the cheap ones that I now find quite satisfactory.”

- BY ROGIER VAN BAKEL

Robinson wasn't so much guarding his palate as preserving his contentment. A simple pleasure had settled into place, untroubled by ambition, and he knew to leave it alone.

I think about Robinson's four-cent stogie sometimes, usually when someone asks whether a $10,000 integrated amplifier really sounds five times better than a $2000 one. (Answer: No, it doesn't.) Or whether hearing a $12,000 DAC will ruin you for the $1,000 unit you used to love. (My take: Very possibly.)

Better is hard to forget. Upgrading your gear often reveals new layers of beauty and nuance, but it also shifts your baseline. Yesterday's “Wow!” becomes today's “meh.” So we climb—not necessarily getting to seventh heaven, but quickly forgetting what felt like enough only yesterday. We chase sparkle and resolution like a cat stalks a laser dot. We lurch from amplifier to amplifier in search of the One True Timbre. The most wretched among us—the terminal tweakers, engineers of their own discontent—don't even want to reach the summit. For them, it’s about staying in motion. The hunt becomes its own pyrrhic reward.

Up the ladder, down the rabbit hole