After thinking about this as I worked through a putting some finishing touches on a decent sized project, I came to some conclusions.

I think back to all the jobs that made me really excited to be in this industry and proud to do what I do. And it really comes down to people. Case in point: 1/5 years ago, we did a really nice house for a guy who moved down from Seattle. $3 mil+ home. Full C4 integration with 16 DA zones, 6 video zones, lighting, HVAC, security, surveillance, pool control, garage doors, etc. Dedicated theater with Stewart CineCurve, Panamorph, JBL Synth, full AI acoustic treatment, etc. I had a blast working on it! It came together brilliantly and we looked forward to going there to work. Well, for whatever reason (irrelevant), this client lived in the home for 2 or 3 weeks and called us up and informed us that he was moving back to Seattle! WTF? Whatever I guess. I am sure he had good reasons. He took a bunch of the gear to upgrade his old home and put the house on the market. It sold within a month to some goofy chinese guy. We went there once to remove the Qualia 004 we had in for demo while the home was being shown, and once again to install this guy's Monoprice HDMI matrix and chinese "apple tv" and mount his walmart tv in the exercise room. It was miserable. Same house. Same gear (aside from the junk he brought with him). But the passion was lost because the guy was not nearly as cool as the other guy.

The clients make it all worthwhile...or make it suck donkey nards.

If I had to choose specifics, SONOS and dedicated theaters excite me. 2.35 screens, anamorphic lenses, acoustic treatments, big subwoofers, etc. oh my. :) I do miss my days with the hi-fi stuff. Setting up a $40k+ set of Wilsons with some massive Krell amps, preamps with big heavy knobs, and garden hose cables that I do not have to hide in a freaking wall sounds waaaay more exciting than 16x16 HDBaseT matrices, apple TVs, curved 4k displays, millions of wall warts and RJ45 terminations. I would give it all up to do 2 ch. in a heartbeat if I could. :)