John,
I understand what you mean about the road to Damascus. Same path for me with this B&O.
I think part of it is realizing how little difference the constant tweaking/maintenance issues made compared to more stable gear, and another part of it is as I got older and move involved in other things the hobby aspect became less of a fun hobby/something to do and more of a burden/drudgery that detracted from the music. Between work and everything else in life, when I want to listen to music I want to get to it quickly, not have to warm this up, tweak that tonearm, play music in 22 minutes per LP side. In my college years and for a while after, the hobby aspect was enjoyable, not so much after a while.
I still like to listen to LPs now and then, but the B&O table is a lot easier than my VPI HW19 setup was. And it's nice to use my PC music server with my iPad to pick albums and playlists from the comfort of my listening couch and not have to lug my creaking bones over to the system to pick music.
And with the B&O I personally haven't found any downside sonically, the 8000's are the best speakers I've ever heard in my room, which has its share of problems with bass bloat and other things. The Beolabs mate very well with it.
In college I worked in a record/stereo store that had a high end room as well. I got to where I couldn't stand to listen to anything I could afford, but back then there seemed to be a lot more difference between mass market and high end gear. Back then the Dahlquist DQ10's were king, but I seem to get a lot of the same kind of imaging from my Beolabs with a lot less fuss.