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I'm amazed but not suprised this article does not even begin to address the high cost of production. nowhere,,nada. No mention of this being the worst economic recovery in history,

You mention that we are the problem for not getting the message out.. Getting the message out? What message can you get out that will put more disposable income in peoples wallets?? You can hire the world's greatest marketing firms to get the message out but if people are going broke it won't matter.

You can largely thank the death of high end audio to the politicians and bureaucrats that always want to tax the 'evil' rich. In this case, companies that produce boutique audio components. This leads to job losses, lower consumer confidence, higher prices for componentry, etc; etc; which are ultimately passed on to the consumer. Thus, the consumer faces across the board tax increases on virtually everything (gas, groceries, utilities, services, etc; leaving them with less disposable income to purchase high-end audio componentry they love. Businesses then either have to close shop or go overseas to avoid high taxation. Then, those that go overseas just to survive, they are demonized for not 'paying their fair share' and to the point of being called unamerican. 

So as less and less people are unable to afford high-end gear under a progressive tax structure, so leaves less and less high-end gear being sold to the general public.

Its funny, the same liberals that love high end audio and even the ones that produce such boutique gear will immediatekly run to the voting booths and vote-in the very ones that are destroying their business,

The moral of the story: When government acts, the market reacts.

The upshot is, when it all said and done,we will all be equally unable to afford such high-end audio gear,

It can't get anymore more fair than that can it? After all, if we have learned anything in the last four years, we have learned that fairness is the new economic dynamic.

Thank God for that! High end audio has become absolutely PATHETIC. The entire industry is a fraud and is supported on pure lies. 99% of all companies should be reported to BBB. I hope some readers here do just that. Transparent is selling 30K cables, YG is selling 100K speakers, etc. 

Let's all make a pact. Every time Stereophile's tests are drastically different than the snake oil the manufacturer posted, let's report them to BBB. 

This garbage needs to be run out of town. 

You can largely thank the death of high end audio to the politicians and bureaucrats that always want to tax the 'evil' rich. In this case, companies that produce boutique audio components. This leads to job losses, lower consumer confidence, higher prices for componentry, etc; etc; which are ultimately passed on to the consumer. Thus, the consumer faces across the board tax increases on virtually everything (gas, groceries, utilities, services, etc; leaving them with less disposable income to purchase high-end audio componentry they love. Businesses then either have to close shop or go overseas to avoid high taxation. Then, those that go overseas just to survive, they are demonized for not 'paying their fair share' and to the point of being called unamerican.

What are you talking about?  Taxes have nothing to do with the fact that Hi End audio is actually alive and well, and this article from 1994 is worth reading for its comedic value.  Hi End audio is also doing well in Europe and every wealthy country on Earth, regardless of tax structure. Is it the mainstream of consumer electronics? No.  Does that matter? Not at all.

"I remember reading an article exactly like this in the early 90's". I was saying to myself. Then I saw the speakers in question. Aha! From a mass market perspective, the high end can't die. In order for that to happen, it has to be alive in the first place. Long live high end audio!

If High End died back in 1994 then it definately got resurrected into the unholy lifeless abomination that we see today.  I have never seen more medicore equipment sporting five figure price tags than we have right now.  I think its time for Stereophile to say to the manufactures that if you can't produce an excellent CD player, amplifier, ect. for less than the price of a brand new VW Passat you should probably kill yourself.  

I actually think that Stereophile should leave out pricing of equipment all together from their magazine.  They should let every piece of equipment compete against each other with out pretense. They should especially keep reviewers in the dark on what equipment costs.  But this might be unfair to them because how can they know what piece of equipment sounds better if they can't look at the price tag.   

Don't take the bait! Just ignore them!

I am an audiophile I don’t own and can never hope to own a $250,000 Hi end system.

However I think the reality is that the younger generation do not care about music as much. I have three children all in their late teens early twenties at college and whilst they all play music on i phones pods and computers and docking stations none of them have any desire to own a hi-fi which when I was there age was my ambition when I started out with a Rega 3 Nad amp and pair of speakers. Music especially pop or rock is delivered over youtube with a video experience as well and there are many other distractions like video games, the internet, the latest app for the smart phone etc. They are happy to stream music over the net and download MP-3's and do not understand their father’s quaint obsession with his $15,000 entry level audiophile system “ yes Dad it sounds good but my I-phone does all this neat stuff as well.”

The way the music industry is going it will all be delivered digitally whether that is in MP3 or some Higher definition format you will download or stream it. Ultimately I believe ownership of music vinyl / CD/ or downloads will disappear and you will have a subscription stream service in the cloud over a high speed broadband connection.

I only have one close friend that shares my interest in Audiophile sound and frankly we feel like the last of the Mohicans as I know nobody else that has this interest and the serious money Hi-end is only for Russian Oligarchs and Billionaires and the occasional lottery winner.

"Women continue to avoid the High End"I

I think there's fewer men avoiding Victoria's Secret stores these days.

There is really nothing different now, than there has been in the fairly short history of mega bux audio. There has ALWAYS been the ridiculously expensive gear, and there has always been those who will buy it. Its like yachts. You don't have to sell many of them to stay in business. Same thing today...

As long as we humans enjoy listening to music, there will be a high end market. Same thing with every consumable, be boating, exotic autos, you name it.

For a high end audio shop to make a buck is another question. Its all in the name. Those without the name will go away. So what, those in the know dont know about them anyway.

Problem solved..

WWW.EMOTIVA.COM...

http://www.outlawaudio.com/products/index.html

http://www.tektondesign.com/pendragon.html

http://www.polkaudio.com/products/lsim707

http://www.bluejeanscable.com/

These are just a few.. There's no real reason to complain.. The market will correct itself.

I won't comment on the economy , government , women audiophiles or even the state of hi end audio . But I will say in our house quality audio is alive and well not only with myself and many of my friends but also the wife and even the daughter ( 12 ) has setup a turntable and is buying records . 

With three system in the house , one in the garage and one at the lake , high end audio is a big and beautiful part of are little world .

I won't be buying any equipment that costs more than my (paid for) 12 year old vehicle at it's current blue book value let alone my (paid for) house. Like exotic cars it's all nice eye candy in the magazines. Like the exotic cars it is also a preview of what may be available a few years down the pike at a price I'm willing to pay. For instance my old Sony Trinitron ran $700, my new LED screen $700. Something around $1,000 is my limit for a single piece new or used.

More important is my music collection which I have been working on since I was 15. Somewhat eclectic, ranging from Renata Tibaldi to Beth Hart (the Live at Paradiso is phenominal), from the old Minneapolis Symphony (my grandfather took me to the bandshell on Lake Harriet when I was very young) to Jimi, Eric Johnson, John Lee Hooker, Alvin Lee etc. Amazingly, the value of a forty plus year collection far outweights the value of the equipment. Duh.

I'll lay some of the blame for no affordable gear directly on the music industry for the crap quality of their consumer products, and that quality has only degraded with the conglomerization of the industry. Decent, meaning that even mid level afforable equipment isn't all that desirable if it's garbage in, garbage out. A perfect example is someone recently mentioned that they had had the loan of a first gen copy of Sergeant Peppers. I would happily wring a music company executives neck for that tape, at least in part as payback for the miserable dreck available to the consumer of the same recording for the last forty plus years.

I've heard direct dubs of master tapes to CD. It is absolutely insane how much better they sounded than commercially available CDs of the exact same music. Imagine if you will the same quality available to the consumer, would they upgrade equipment? Imagine 192/24 or DSD available to the consumer. Of music they want to listen to.

And not just of the same old lame audiophile crap. If it won't rock with Hendrix, Zep, Smokin' Joe Kubeck, Sonny Landreth, Chris Duarte etc., I'm not interested. Maybe Maggie Sansone or John McCutcheon on hammer dulcimer (played guitar occasionally with John when I was a kid). But whatever it is has to have broad consumer appeal. Quit whining about the lack of music appreciation in schools or the intellectual decline of the public, the public ain't buying what the "High End" oracles are pushing.

HD tracks is a good start as are a couple of other sites that have other than the equivalent of Mongolian nose flute or gamelon symphonies available. My next purchase? How about an Oppo 105 which at $1,200 or so seems to do more well than virtually any other piece of equipment at any price. High performance instead of high price high end. Like a VPI Traveler turntable, Odyssey electronics, Tyler Acoustic speakers, NAD electronics, Teac electronics (new DAC in particular), Magnapan and every other company that put out a QUALITY affordable product .

Basically, the "High End" is all uber expensive luxury goods. Marketed to the wealthy. And yes if you can pop $50,000 plus for a set of speakers I'll just have to color you wealthier than me. My speakers are thirty years old and rebuilt several times.

Back to the auto comparison. In auto rags there is a lot more coverage of what an average person can afford. If you're tagging a $5,000 amplifer as "mid-range price" to an avarage person, you are smoking your toe jam. And yes, there are companies currently building quality product in the US of A (not China) who certainly pric e better than that.

In the meantime I guess I'll crank up the old Fender, needed some new 12AU7s and 12AX7s recently, and grab the old cherry sunburstT-Bird Deluxe. Gee, sounds just like the real thing....

I read Stereophile quite often, I consider myself to be a music nut, I own over 3,000 vinyl records and about 5,000 cds and have a terrabyte full of mp3/wav/flac files on my computer. For me, it's about the music first, I love all kinds of rock and roll, but also simply love all kinds of music: Jazz, reggae, pop, classical, electronic, soul, etc. Not super diverse but diverse just the same.

Just so it's stated: Rock and Roll lovers can be high end audiophiles too! Have you heard of the fuss about the Beatles and Beach Boys re-issues?

I am so glad for this article, as I've been revisiting my stereo listening and have upgraded my hardware so I can enjoy a higher level of listening to the music that I love. It's very timely for me and my current thoughts on the subject.

I cannot afford $395.00/meter interconnects or $10,000.00 amplification. Even if I had the freedom to spend the money I have (which I don't, I'm married), I wouldn't.

I read Stereophile to find out about the latest and greatest, a new idea here, a wonderful feature there, but $30,000 for a pair of speakers? Are you kidding me? I can honesly say if I won the lottery I would not own a pair of $30K speakers. I skip over the details of those articles and get to the new ideas or latest technology. I have no interest in such ostentatious gear, they just don't serve my purpose. How "high end" does someone need to be? I have a feeling most often the people who purchase such things do so because they can, not because they actually care or can hear the difference.

The last part of this article, "We focus on the ultra-expensive without spending adequate time on truly affordable equipment. We are elitist snobs about our equipment and the music we enjoy." is exactly what I've been thinking over the past few months as I read the artilces in Stereophile and other mags. You hi-fi journalists should heed this as your mantra! The high end market is suffering? Well that's too bad, but really, how many $10,000 cd players, $6,000.00 dacs or $20,000 amps can a company sell? It's limited, very limited. The manufacturers know that. Gee, maybe if a major High End manufacturer wanted to move their brilliance into more affordable gear then that 's the market reacting to the consumer, that's how it works.

 If you can afford high end, then go for it, you lucky bastards! At the end of the day, purchase as much and as high quality gear as you can afford, you'll be glad you did. Just don't be swept into thinking that you have "golden ears" and you have to have super high end expensive gear to enjoy your music.

Just so you know, I "upgraded" to a 1978 Kenwood KR-6600 and am damned glad I did. I have all good gear throughout my home (Pioneer Elite, Aperion, Denon) but not a single item over $1500. It sounds very nice to me. I'm not trying to impress anyone, I'm attempting to get the best sound quality from the budget I have. I'm happy with the sounds I'm getting, and surely wish I could afford more but have no thoughts of spending $10,000+ on any stereo equipment, ever!

KDub out.

#1 the pricing of some of these products and the audio shops that sell them. I make my own gear now or modify existing gear. I have more fun making it then listening to an audio shop sales person, and it is less expensive so with the money I save I can buy more music or go to more live music.

#2 the recording industry and the lower and lower quality recordings they are making.. included in this is the FM broadcast quality dropping for years. Now we have compressed recordings being broadcast compressed a second time by the radio stations.. just lovely. They have trained our ears to accept this crap diet so why spend on gear. It won't fix the recording. Unless you accept to change your musical taste and buy audiophile recordings only because they sound nice and not because you actually know the artist.

I'm 45, I spent my first pay check on my first audio system when I was 19. Still have it too. Do you think that kids (even boys for that matter) at 19 rush to spend their first pay check on audio today? I would bet that because of the dominace of MP3s, today's 19 year olds won't even care enough about audio when they are 45 to spend a paycheck on gear.

50k, 100k, 200k sound system, why? I would rather spend that money going to live concerts not fooling myself into trying to reproduce them in my living room.

There will always be a few old guys that will spend on audio, but they are not reproducing and making new young ones. For the quality of recordings, I think there is no going back, we are too far down the path...

The best we can do is give our kids a nice starter system for their bedrooms and hope they keep the flame make sure it has good headphones. Always play music in the house using a nice system so it becomes a childhood memory that hopefully will grown into an interest later in their lives.

It is up to us, to save this religion, because the gear makers and recording industry have done their best to kill it.

"We are the problem. We aren't getting the right message out."

When I'm talking about my hobby and my system usually the questions are something like "Does it have a good bass?" or "Is it playing loud?". Bass and loundess are the criteria of the average people for audio. It's hard to convince someone that realism and naturalness are real values. When talking about 3D, presence and soundstage I see blinking and puzzled silence... People see insanity in a person who spends $50000 for audio but not for a BMW. 

The audio will always be an elitist hobby.

The article suggests there is some public good to spreading the high-end. I'd like it first shown that someone is happier listening to music on $20 speakers than 'mid-end' $2k speakers. I mean empirical evidence - hook up blindfolded listens to brain scanners and measure there neurotransmitter levels. If there were a correlation between musical enjoyment and price beyone a certain point I'd have expected my musician and conductor friends to own better stereos than they do.

Just a couple of comments...

I'm glad we still have some high end industry heavyweights (e.g. Revel, AR, Krell?) that have some solid engineering. Engineers have created the optimal knee point in the graph above (e.g. Curl, Pass, Thiel...). The flaky stuff does get weeded out ....CD pen anyone? Experienced and by definition larger companies (with wider product ranges) can straddle the knee (NAD, Revel) and they help keep things sane.

I do think the explosion of reviewers, via the internet, have helped facilitate the luxury/prestige pricing that grabs the headlines. And the review industry is all too happy to go for the ride, after all they get to drive the sportscars we then lust for. I read them ... for fun.

To get others interested in buying or joining in, the article suggests they need to be educated. Creating value in their minds from climbing up the shin. But it is about the music for most people, stupid. What is musically relevant can be got in spades over the crappy PA at the last school party my tween attended last year. I get most of my best new music from funky cafes/shops with crappy speakers. Much of what the high end gets you is not that musically relevant for modern music.. rad soundstage man, dig those microdynamics! (Actually my system does allow me to hear why the musician chose a particular sample or synth setting)

My biggest fear is how the music industry and HR music will work. There is so much music out there (Thanks Stephen and co). But the mainstream download source is worse than CD. Still musically relevant, but they will never know any benefit if the source is crap. I hope cheaper bandwidth and a more sustainable market model brings new music that they want to hear at prices they can afford otherwise why upgrade? The British mantra of source first is more relevant than ever before.

The headphones explosion is gonna help. Good heaphones and an HR source kept intact to those tiny drivers blows the price graph out of the water. Maybe they will want to share those good times with others or cook at the same time. I gotta go drain the pasta....

Thanks to Stereophile for (re)publishing a wonderfully written and insightful article. Despite that the original publish date was in 1994, the sentiments expressed are still valid today. I think all of us that pursue high end audio view with some absurdity the notion of a $200,000 pair of speakers. That of course does not prevent some of us from buying them. I have been a audio enthusiast for forty years. It was not until about a year ago that I really had the available funds to build the system I had dreamed about for most of my life. 

My friends thought I had lost my mind when I recently purchased the last piece of my audio puzzle, a quite expensive speaker cable. One of my friends commented that he wanted to call the people with the white coats and padded rooms to come get me. A couple of weeks later I invited my friend and his young son over to watch a ball game and listen to music. 

Upon their arrival I could tell this teenager wanted to be anywhere but in my front room. We were talking about audio when I made the comment to this kid that his iPod, ear buds and iTunes music only let him hear about half of what was musically available. To prove my point, I asked him if he had any of his favorite CD's in his Dad's car. 

He was, I suppose, just competitive enough to accept my challenge that I would totally shock him with what he would hear if he would let me. I loaded the CD, looked at him and said "hold on." After about fifteen seconds in the sweet spot he began looking left right and center- obviously trying to figure out the sound stage. Shortly thereafter a smile appeared on his face, his head began bobbing to his music and his toe was tapping to the beat. He commented that he heard so much "new stuff." We sat and listened to music for the rest of the afternoon. Football became a secondary event. I turned him on to everything from Deep Purple to Jerry Jeff Walker, to Miles Davis to Beethoven. He and his Dad took turns in the sweet spot. All in all we had a terrific time. 

Prior to that afternoon my friend and his son had never really been exposed to a reference high end system and a dedicated listening session. Their playback systems were mid-fi or an iPod. Mind you, I'm not being discriminatory in any way to those type of systems. In fact, I have an iPod in my car and listen to it all the time. But I think that having the opportunity to be exposed to something they had not heard before changed their perception of my hobby. 

That said, I'm sure my friends still think I'm crazy for buying a $23,000 speaker cable. But I also hold out hope that I have created one convert in a sixteen year old kid who discovered what is musically possible if one follows their passion. Regardless of the cost or how long it takes. As with so many other areas of our lives, the key to the future is in our youth. 

In the end, that afternoon validated for me all the time and monetary investment I have made in my audio system. And I had a lot of fun in the process. I have to believe that is what it is all about. 

How well our hobby, or perhaps better stated, our passion fares in the future is quite uncertain. Educating our youth that an iPod is only one piece of the puzzle seems to me to be a good path to pursue. All audiophiles put up with the lack of dealers, the poor availability of demo equipment and the high cost of components because we are passionate about our hobby. As long as the passion holds out, so will our industry. 

Didn't your (reviewers at Stereophile) credibility died when Bob Carver in a very carefull monitored experiment first proved that he could make his Craver 1.5T sound exactly as the Levinson ML-2's? The latter was chosen by the Peter Aczel's team of reviewers from Audio Critic in 1981 and they all consented that the 1.5T sounded sonically the same as the ML-2 but costed yet a fraction of the Levisons, did not use 800 Watts in total continously and could deliver much more power the 25 Watts @ 8 Ohms.
Same experiment was conducted when Stereophile challenged Carver to make the 1.5t sound like a very expensive Conrad Johnson Premier amp. Outcome was, although you did not go for AB testing with no real argument I must say and yes I've read the Carver Challenge article from 1985, but had to give in that Carver succeeded again by making his $700,- amp sounding like your ten times more expensive reference amp even the muddy sound in the low register typical for tube designs could be transfered in his design. You should have embraced him as the new kid on the block but no you kept drooling at even bigger amps gobbeling up resources with their huge kilovolts of Xformers, beercan size of parallel configured electrolytics, arrays of TO3's powertransistors, huge aluminum fascia's and coolingbody's all adding to the pricetag.
I asked Jeff Rowland once why his Class D cool operating 302 had the same huge expensive aluminum heatsinks as the model 8 that really needed those heatsinks. He answered, that's what my customers want..... Just like the meters on the Pass Labs XA series. Fun but unneccesary just like your magazine.

Regards

The problem now (almost 20 years later) is that the high end is becoming too high end!!! The prices are ridiculous! Their clientel is basically the 1%'s and a lot of them are not buying their products ...not because they don't have the money...they aren't just that interested in music - it's not a wise investment to them. 

Now for the people making 40k and above - Tekton, Emotiva, and get this...professional audio gear are becoming gold mines for price vs. performance!!!! Also the used market is biting into possible high-end profits.  Out of my last 4 sets of speakers, only one set was spank brand new. I just recently gave those to a friend - to introduce him to this hobby - and he's liking it, alot (I gave him the new speakers - I kept the used ones for myself).

I also see the high-end slowly catching on to computer based audio.  The things that they are doing - I've been doing at home for years.  As a mater of fact - at CES they showed a HTPC that cost 6K, looking at the features and everything that it could do, mine is comparable and it took me less than 1k to build - I control it from my android and used it to get rid of my cable boxes! If they come out with a nice high-end sound card, I'll get rid of my receiver - the only thing in the system will be my speakers, amps and my PC.

I see the high-end changing, metamophing, becoming something else.  It's just like a seed or a catipillar, it virtually "dies" before it becomes something else totally!!!!

At The first Stereophile Show in LA I was one of the DJ's at the Hafler room and I was trying to freak out Cory (remember him ?) by cranking up Spinal Tap"s Break Like The Wind CD. NHT always had Rock Music in fact at one LA Stereophile Show (think it was the second) we had a No Jenefier Warnes sign on the  rooms door.I was playing The Hellcasters Peter Gunn in the small room with Super Zeros and a  Sub Zero 

Stores are going out of business alright, baby boomers are passing away too bad but this is the time to buy used equipment for a song, if you know what you are doing of course. It is a buyer market as the pool of buyers has shrunk considerably on the used market. In this regard those are exciting times.

I imagine amplifier emulation could be done even better with DSP.

Ridiculously expensive audio equipment exists because:

1. The rich are getting richer worldwide, and there are more and more very rich people who can afford it (whether or not they actually appreciate it, and I would suggest that many do not and simply look at it as another category of expensive toy);

2. Audio equipment manufacturers are not stupid and will take their money.

Ditto for high-end sports cars, jewlery, houses, etc. etc. etc. Way too much overanalysis going on here, people.

Nowadays people in the USA have lifestyles that resemble Elvis on his last days with 6 TVs and an input of so many stimuli that it drove him nuts. There is absolutely no way that not so old aging Elvis could have been an Audiophile, as he had lost his ability to relax and listen. 

The above statement applies to a very large portion of the world, especially societies where people grow up with high levels of tech consumption. Japan is a great exception and it would deserve some serious analysis by Western Audio publications. Unfortunately, Americans are so afraid to do cross cultural analysis that might result in data that doesn't put them on top of the world and, consequently, Japan has been the focus of major criticism and no imitation (except for big corporations that secretly imitate some of Japan's ways in order to boost their profits – smart capitalists know better!)

Don't get me wrong. I think the USA, UK (and, ironically, Cuba) have the best music scenes in the world by far! But playing music and listening to it are different matters: one is active and the other one passive.

This lack of ability to become passive in-house members of the music community may have started with cable and channel surfing. If you don't give your mind the chance to settle down, relax, and enjoy, then, you are destroying the very foundation that could allow you to become a music lover that can turn off the lights and enjoy the trip of just listening. I am in my mid 30s and my parents did not have cable at home and limited my TV time severely. I was not allowed to own a video game console. I did not like this when I was a kid and did not understand what they were doing. Now I am eternally thankful and I am hoping I will be able to do the same with my baby son. I want him to grow up and share with is dad the joy and spiritual adventure of closing one's eyes and listening. 

I've been posting on audio boards since '96, mostly about analog reply. The High-End variety. Today, some 17 years later, I'm still talking to exactly the same individuals about exactly the same thing. Sure, some new blood entered and some folks dropped out, but in essence not much has changed. Same old anoraks chewing over the same drivel.

Now witness the group on SHF. Young folks buying 'tables, older music lovers wanting to experience the ease and natural presentation of analog again. Are they looking at the new $35,000 arm or a Onedorf? Let's not be silly. There's an immediate opportunity to bring a large number of interested, very interested, music loves into our fold. Some firms are, indeed, trying to favor that market. It's just that we, the opinion leaders, are still stuck on the old High-End model. We want more people to enter the hobby? We are the ones who need to alter our outlook first.

Excellent reprint John.  I believe I first read a similar article in the 1970s from (I thought was) Stereophile.  It was a Xeroxed copy some high end store near my high school had on the counter.  Something like 12 pages.  I was hanging out there lusting after a Scott amp. 

The core problem is we are selling sound, not image.  When someone buys a Rolex they care little for the specs.  Rolex, Porsche, Cartier and Bose sell image.  Rolex is about as accurate as a Casio, Porsche about as fast as a Mustang, Bose - well.  We are killing ourselves seeking the best sound we can.  The costs are almost always outside a sane ratio for what we earn (like most Porsche owners).  Unlike Porsche our products are well hidden. 

We need to generate public lust.  Consider the 12 year old with a Ferrari poster on the wall.  Where did he get that image?  Someone created it and fed it to him.  We need to look a lot closer at image to draw more people to the hobby.  Better sound is learned from hearing better sound and that first sale needs to be image based or people will never cross that line.  So stop advertising in Stereophile (sorry JA) and put ads in WineSpectator, Cigar Afficianato, Road and Track, The New Yorker, Conde-Nast, etc.  Buy some movie placements.  When James Bond comes home and there are a couple of Wilson MAXX he fires up for a quick unvailing of Halle Berry, there will be sales. 

P 

The simple fact that this column seems as relevant now as it did in 1994 suggests to me that there are some structural issues inherent to the world of high end audio that limit its appeal, but also that these issues should not necessarily be read as signs of the apocalypse.  In fact I think the high end audio market today is as healthy if not healthier than ever before.  From Magico, Devialet, and Constellation to GoldenEar, HRT, Schiit, and everything in between, those who love audio have never had more options available to them.

Having said that, here are some observations from a young audiophile (I'm in my 20's) on the state of "high end."  Firstly, let's start with what exactly "high end audio" means, and what that definition itself means for the world of high end audio.  Certainly it means many things to many people, but I'm going to generalize a bit based on my observations of the Stereophile set (this being a Stereophile article after all).

I think we can start by stating that high end audio isn't solely about price.  Granted, even on the "low" end this hobby is not for the faint of wallet, but companies like PSB, HRT, and Schiit make it possible to get in on the game without having to take out a second mortgage (some of us don't even have a first).  Conversely, there are expensive audio products that often for one reason or another fall beyond the walled garden of high end audio:  in-wall speakers (and simply much of what is considered home theater), high end speaker docks, and lifestyle speakers such as those from Bang and Olufsen come to mind.  In their defense, Stereophile's mission statement is perhaps more defined, there existing the sister publication Home Theater, but too often I think there is a certain component elitism that excludes a wide range of products that produce excellent sound, sometimes within the constraints of space or aesthetics.

Luckily, I think the once moribund high end audio industry is starting to come to these same realizations--that great, "high end" audio doesn't have to mean large stacks of expensive, industrial looking gear.  From the computer as source to the explosion of head-fi, and most recently the growing segment of all in one digital integrateds or "power-dacs," high end audio is finally moving to accommodate the ways that most of us listen to music: on the go, at our desks, and in our living rooms.

Considered in this way, the high end is looking healthy.  Young people love music just as they always have.  Granted, disposable income is a limiting factor (young people just don't have as much money), but here too I think recent trends are positive, if yet to be embraced by the gamut of high end manufacturers.  I mention companies like HRT and Schiit because they embody much of what is possible in a new world of high end audio.  Taking advantage of advances in small batch manufacturing (enabling them to keep production here in the States) and direct online sales, they have managed to release well designed products at outstanding price points.

There will always be a place (and desire) for bleeding edge megabuck systems, just as there are for million dollar supercars, but I think that great sound is really available for less.  Certainly the continued success of computer audio and class d amplification topologies will continue to push the cost curve down even further, but the next step is up to the manufacturers themselves, designing products that look as good as they sound, are easy to use, and fit into people's everyday lives.

Bowers and Wilkins I think has done a great job in this regard.  By making speaker docks and soundbars, they broaden their audience:  and who knows, once people get a taste of great sound they might just migrate up the chain to a full Classe/B&W system, losing nothing of modern functionality and aesthetics.  Car companies have been managing the upsell for ages.  But even old dogs can learn new tricks, case in point the beautiful new Wadia Intuition 01.  Perhaps a long way from affordable, and mass market appeal likely won't be helped by I2S hdmi inputs instead of mass market standard hdmi, but change comes one step at a time.

Hopefully by the time my friends are ready to graduate to high end audio, contemporary music will be mastered (almost) as well as the latest recording of the Copenhagen lute symphony.  In either case, high end audio is here to stay.

  Could never understand why high priced audio equipment  bothers some folks so much . If you don't want it , don't buy it , but don't mock the ones that do .

hi-end audio industry seems to be dying. becauese old audio equipments with good sound are immortal. they can't be disappered, they resurrect forever at the repair shop.

if someone take the old audio stuff, and destroy them all, audio industry will be revived again. I think hiend audio and fashion industry have something in common. design art!. but people will not repair their grandparents's clothes again and again but most people repair and enjoy for their audio equipments. that's the different point. that makes hi-end audio industry's hopeless future.

No one has mentioned that we now have many other tech items competing for the extra dollars.

A direct competitor is home theater.  I know of very few folks that would spend extra money for a high quality stereo, but just about everyone I know has spent a good amount on home theater.  Not only does this compete directly from a spending standpoint, but also competes for physical space.  I watch a lot of movies in the home theater with my family, so it also competes from the standpoint of how I spend spare time.  Movies take 2 hours to watch and we usually watch 2 or 3 movies on the weekend.

Others that come to mind are gaming consoles, computers, iPods, smart phones, etc.  In the 80's, most of these didn't exists.  Some existed, but now days you need many of the items to function these days.

I agree to a point with the comparison between high end audio and high end automobiles. To continue with that analogy, I think that one part of the problem is that many people can't afford a Magico/Krell type system, just like many people can't afford a Lamborghini or a Ferrari. With cars, people tend to buy about as nice a car as they can afford, whether that be a Mustang or a Porsche. But their attitude with audio is, "I can't afford a Ferrari (Magico), so I'll just ride a bike (iPod with factory earbuds)". I think more of us need to show people that it is possible to get good sound at a reasonable price. If we can get someone started on the journey for a $300-$1000, they may discover that they would like to continue the journey.

"The automotive business model where $25K - $50K pricing exists doesn't appear to be a hindrance to demand for that product."

Seriously? Not exactly a logical comparison. I'll go so far as to say a stupid comparison. I can't use a $25K-$50K high end system to drive to my job site(s), go to the grocery store, or haul a load of lumber. My 12 year old truck will do so just fine and it does come with a sound system to boot. A two-fer. For most people a vehicle is not a luxury but an absolute requirement. Auto companies, among the largest corporations in the world. Audio specialty companies, microscopic, making their marketing budget microscopic.

"By whose definition? Have you ever read Stephen Mejias' column in Stereophile, or any of Sam Tellig's columns, or any of the other reviews of reasonably priced equipment?"

Why yes I do.

Reading back through my initial post, among others, I specifically mentioned NAD as a high value manufacturer. And cited a few others like Magnapan, Odyssey who actually manufacture in the USA and STILL manage to produce high value high performance equipment.

After all, wasn't an Odyssey Khartago amplifier compared very favorably to the flavor of the month Soulution? Considering the Khartago can be biased for a particular set of speakers, can be configured mono or stereo, can have the power supply upgraded, can be ordered in a selection of colors, can be sent back to the factory for checkups and tuneup, costs under $1,000, is made in Indianapolis, Indiana AND has a better warranty, you tell me which one represents "High Value High Performance" and which one typifies "High End"

Measured purely in performance, the Soulution is a better amplifier, but it is not fifty times better than the Odyssey.

But keep in mind that I also said the "High End" is useful in that many developements initially available only in the high priced euipment may eventually trickle down the price ladder. Digital is a perfect example. Not that many years ago a decent DAC ran into the many thousands of dollars, now it has hit the 90/10 split, over 90% of the performance at less than 10% of the price.

Young people involved in music, what do we do these days? why don't we put every single cent we earn on great hi-end equipment? 

one of the main reasons that comes to my mind is passive Vs. active music involvement: 30 or 40 years ago, the process of creating your own music, was limited to play with your band and perhaps get some money to record a crappy demo in a studio or  have the talent and luck to hit it and become part of the music industry as an artist. Nowadays you can get professional sound quality records from your home, although this is easy to achive it requires some cash, so imagine you have to make the decision of investing your cash on hi end audio, wich will get you a fantastic listening experience, or invest it in a very good home studio, wich will give you the possibility of creating your own music, and even recover your investment by recording other bands, earn you a very good job in the music industry, one of your passions, I never doubted a nanosecond where to put my bucks, such is the point of view of many of my friends with wich I share the passion for music. 

I grew up in an audiophile household, and was exposed at a young age to mid-fi/hi-fi gear that I would never have known about (or been able to buy) if it wasn't for older members of the family.  And it didn't hurt either being an aspiring young pianist; actually being able to listen to Horowitz play a Beethoven Sonata I was trying to learn was a revelation.  So I valued recordings and their sound quality; whether it was vinyl, tape, or later CD's - I borrowed from my older siblings or bought what I could afford and was happy with it at the time.

If you love music you'll listen to it in any format (rather than not listen at all), hence an economic trade off.  Do I want to pay more to listen to (or own) higher fidelity music - or do I simply want to subscribe to some digital cloud and stream/download more music (of lesser fidelity) then I could ever probably afford to own.   Actually I do some of both.  We all have different priorities and budgets, and while certainly most all musicians appreciate superior sound quality, neither can we all afford to (or need to)  "break the bank" with investing in the kind of high end gear routinely featured in Stereophile.

Many years later, I have EE degrees, I've made the transition from consumer to pro-audio, I've worked in the pro audio industry, I'm a member of the AES, I go to the technical/design sessions at the conventions, and I'm more of a software engineer nowadays than an "audio engineer" per se.  I've made some live recordings, I've been in studios, I know mastering engineers, I've taught audio courses, and I can make/remaster recordings in a home built studio.    

While it is easy/cheap to make recordings with a computer running ProTools (or similar - even free - software) with any number of $$-$$$$ audio interfaces and semi-pro/pro monitors, the results are often not commercial grade recordings (as one poster pointed out).  This is not so much because semi-pro users don't have the most expensive gear, or they don't know how to record properly or structure gain stages to preserve dynamics.  It's often just because they are working in untreated, acoustically terrible rooms (which not even room EQ can entirely fix).  

To put it succinctly, the boom in home "pro" recording just continues to make more work (and profit) for mastering engineers for anyone who thinks that having the "right"  gear is going to bring them professional results.  And the same is true for audiophiles (in their living rooms) thinking that a 20K piece of gear is going to get them closer to some "absolute sound" compared to a 10K piece of gear.   

The endorsement theme in both pro and high end audio advertising is sadly very effective advertising/propaganda.  So and so [insert famous engineer, producer, musician] uses this piece of gear, so you should too (with the implication that you will of course get the same results they get in their room - in yours).  Or all that is standing between you and "success" is that you are not using the right gear.  But you don't need to have the exact same gear that a famous professional engineer, producer, or musician uses to get professional and/or musically accurate results (and neither do you have to spend 5-10X more on your monitors compared to the ones the recording was mixed/mastered on).  You just have to be smart about finding and buying gear (and the room you use it in) at any price point (realizing there is a diminishing point of return).

So I read Stereophile for John Atkinson's test reports, technical analysis and commentary.  But I have a hard time with the die-hard analog recording fans, and the reviewers.  There are seldom A/B blind comparison tests; reviews are performed in untreated rooms with not even pro or full spectrum versions of frequency and time domain room correction (which you may not need in an acoustically treated room).

More importantly, the price range of the gear being reviewed can be 2X, 5X, .... greater in cost compared to what the engineers producing recordings (even in the review at hand) are using for references.  Spending 20K to 100K on a speaker to use in a home living room is not going to mitigate the poor acoustics of the room, or any other of the weak links in a home system.  And neither is its performance likely to achieve parity with a professional system at half the cost in a professional mixing/(re)mastering facility.  Yes, it is true that the premier mixing/mastering facilities with major label clients have huge "cost is no object" investments in their rooms and (multiple sets) of monitors/amps - but there are increasingly many commercial recordings made in well calibrated semi-pro project/pro studios whose total gear investment may be 50-100K (even with a cheap console).

The old "Eighty Twenty Rule" can be transposed to engineering, i.e., it can take less than 50% of the effort/cost to get to 80% of the design/project completed.  But getting the last 20% done, or optimizing a design to be 100% efficient or up to theoretical specs - can take sometimes unpredictable amounts of effort/cost.  While no one expects the price/performance ratio to be a linear graph, much of the high-end gear in Stereophile seems beyond even this profile/analysis.  It's boutique gear for collectors, where price-performance is not the issue (and optimizing this is not the goal).   

Much of this comes down to franchises, money, and advertising (at the expense of musical value for the dollar).  Consumer/high end audio and pro audio seldom overlap in terms of franchises and advertising dollars; but it's consumer/high end audio customers who often pay through the nose (compared to pro audio customers).  The mutual exclusion of pro and consumer franchises/lines of gear is on purpose and by design.

You are never going to see a review of Focal SM-9's,  Adam S3X/S4X's, Apogee Converters, or a host of other pro equipment in Stereophile (or other non-pro) magazines that would put consumer audio/high-end gear at the same price point to shame w.r.t price/performance ratio.   There are sometimes units by Bryston, Grace Audio, and Lipinski reviewed in Stereophile - but these are not the "pro" version or line (if a pro version exists).  

Certain design specs and characteristics can always be optimized and/or re-imagined differently via all kinds of component choices, layouts, discrete designs, filter implementations, etc.  But don't mistake the plethora of high end product choices/designs as "innovation" - because it seems to me that far more innovation goes on in the pro audio world (and sometimes trickles down from pro to consumer lines for the companies that maintain both).  Unfortunately, more (mature audio) design choices can lower the barrier to entry in the consumer audio market and make it easier for someone to claim yet another "esoteric" design and market it to high-end audiophiles who will believe the advertising.  That kind of marketing does not usually work in pro-audio circles.

Following the lead of the unlamentable snarling Mike Kay, many hi-end dealers visibly sneer at potential customers or ingnore them entirely. $70K for components, and have been unable to complete my system except by mail-order because every one of the locals seem INSANE. Not responding to simple e-mail: how much is EXPENSIVE BRAND MODEL #GIVEN? Call them, talk nicely,  and they don't ring back. Try to audition with your own material and get a rant suggestive of psychosis. Suggest "trade-in" and get shunted off, even when they say they take tradeins.  Gave up on a wiring/cable order for $10K when the salesman would not fill after a year and am still using hookup wire. In what other industry are the customers treated so poorly--even used car salesmen hide their disdain enough to induce sales among their victims. G*D bless: Music Direct; Legacy; Audio Advisor;Acoustic Sciences, without territorial or other self-inflicted wounds. Audiogon for not joining the cartel. (Note: Am nowhere near NYC, supposedly in a location of nice folks.)

I blame the Jawbone Jambox.

In all our navel gazing, rarely is it acknowledged that we are a symptom, not a cause. The "industry," manufacturers and the audiophile choir, seem too often to be trapped in the shadow of a 70's and 80's cultural phenomenon. Bringing back that time is impossible, though if it were possible, the hardware ingredients of today's audio world would not be a limitation. As JA and others point out, equipment exists at all prices, and is covered within Stereophile. Too much of our self-criticism is like blaming an on-stage chair for being a different color than in the past, while ignoring that it's the play, the human dynamic, this is or is not the one we wish were being acted out. Most people never have and never will read "buff books" like Stereophile or TAS, or in the past Sensible Sound, Listener, Audiogram, Audio Critic, Fi, Play, Sounds Like, etc. The demise of most of those publications isn't because they did anything wrong. The continued existence of Stereophile and TAS isn't because they "won." When the climate changes faster than evolution and a crop fails, it's not the fault of the seeds. Yesterday's audio ecology wasn't created by us, neither is today's, and tomorrow's won't be either. We're blind men feeling the elephant's, tail, leg, tusks and trying to extrapolate outwards ... better we should look back at where we came from ... being teenagers who wanted to get high on music, who reveled in immersion, speakers on either side of a waterbed. In the rational and rationalized climb towards audiophilia, we fogot that we're all humans who "just want to have fun!" There is zero possibility that the component audio business, or high-end, or merit-based hi-fi, will grow because audiophiles do a better job of preaching. In a world in which an intense relationship to music is successfully enabled by headphones and buds on an almost universal basis, there's no shortage of appreciative subjects ... some of whom would take off the phones and use speakers if they could be similarly immersed in a non-intellectual visceral manner. We need the retailers who sell headphones and buds to set up computers with nearfield speakers (off-the-head headphones) on either side. If the fertile soil of the old audio world was having the bedroom or dormroom be more attractive socially because it had better sound, the core of a new audio relationship is making YouTube and the rest of today's audio sources sound so good at the computer that one doesn't want to stop. All the rationalizing of mostly men becoming addicted to an upgrade-path first requires non-rationailzed immersion. The soil has never been so fertile. Never before has such a huge percentage of the population been addicted to an immersive aural experience. We have totally won, but the play's not over yet. There will be a renewed expansion of off-the-head sound ... more so if headphone retailers set up appropriately seductive systems which cater to peoples' existing life style. Any attempt to tell people that they have to worship a pair of speakers on the other side of the room is doomed to a fall on deaf ears. That's like telling people that to enjoy art they have to go live in a museum.

What killed high-end audio is high-end audio.What was once a great hobby full of fun-to-be-with people and good affordable audio has degenerated into the lunatic fringe.

Super expensive  equipment that 99.9% of audio people cant afford,magazine that do nothing but promote this expensive nonsense.Since reveiwers never pay for the stuff, cost never enters into the review.

Super snobbish audio store owners, whos buy-something-and-get-out or just-get-out attitude doesnt help.When was the last time you walked into an audio store and felt welcome?

Audio nuts who look down at or you or verbally abuse you because you dont like that 5 watt $10k amplifier that he thinks its the best.Hobbies are empty if you cant share it with people,but who wants to deal with audio people?

Music that doesnt need good equipment to repoduce.yes in the old days people listened to classical,jazz and a good stereo was need but today music is so artificial it no similarity to real music anyway.

full or con artists,cd demagnitizers??!!

I started in audio the late 60's and by the early 2000's even I gave up on it.

Lets face it high-end deserves to die.

I had two interesting conversations about audio today:

1) Audio Research told me that the sound of their $8995 Reference 75 power amplifier can be improved by adding the $12,000 Nordost Odin power cord.

2) I recommended an excellent receiver to a friend for $113.

Yes you can buy a decent stereo today for $1000 total. But you can buy an excellent one for $2000 total.

Both of my children (aged 17 and 12) are musically inclined and love to listen, but not to the same music as me. ("Dad, I don't like your music. First of all, there's no words. And second, it sounds as if the musicians are just making the stuff up as they go along." )   But they don't care about quality. MP3 files listened through the throwaway earbuds they distribute for free on planes or in hotel gyms are fine for them.

"And second, it sounds as if the musicians are just making the stuff up as they go along."

knowing your tastes, this is probably true...

Problem is obvious and easy to solve.

End all "subjective" thinkings in audio and end its status as a superstition among non-audiophiles (also for some audiophiles). Status of the audio world is as bad as the wine tasting industry, where there is no objectiveness and everything is "trust your ear" and "personal preference".

In the computer industry, objectiveness exists in the form of scientific hard numbers, such as CPU clock speed, GPU clock speed, benchmarks and so on. In the auto industry, objectiveness exists in the form of top achievable road speed, torque, horsepower and so on.

If one says a 20MHz computer is better than a 2GHz computer, and hire top singer to advertise for him, nobody would pay him attention. But similar condition in audio industry would yield totally different results, which is undesirable.

Hello, Ariel:

What the computer and auto industry has achieved is to pull their industry out of the superstition ditch by using scientific hard numbers.

Surely horsepower will not tell a consumer how smooth is the ride, but smoothness of a ride is subjective if there is no scientific way to quantify that (a salesman can claim his car gives the smoothest ride, and if you disagree then he can just say it is "personal preference"). Some auto manufacturers did find a way to scientifically quantify "smoothness of ride" though. 

"I would say, in my perfectly objective opinion, that this speaker has the exact quality rating of 5."

That graph.....it makes me cringe.

As a sound engineer, audio editor, etc, etc... I have certainly developed my own belief system in regards to what constitutes "high end" audio, "mid-range" audio, and "low-end" audio.  The thing is, the difference between the three categories is just as non-linear as the price difference between your "Class E" and "Class A" speakers...

Any John, Dick, or Harry can go to Guitar World or (shudder) Best Buy and walk away with a $500 "surround sound system" consisting of 7 speakers, a "subwoofer", and a "receiver".  This system will play back their Blu-Ray soundtracks with all 8 channels present, and is enough of a difference over stereo sound that to them it is going to be a huge difference.  Watching any film in stereo versus a properly setup surround sound system (regardless of the cost) is a very different experience.

The same Johns, Dicks, and Harry's can go to the same stores, or for the more technologically inclined, online retailers, and order themselves a setup consisting of an Onkyo TX-NR5010 or Denon AVR-4520CI 9.2ch Receiver, a pair of Polk RTI A9's with their 3/2/1 Woofer/Mid/Tweeter arrangement, a pair of Polk RTI A5's (2 Woofer/Mids and a Tweeter), two pair of Polk's RTi A1 Bookshelf Speakers (Tweeter/Mid), a New Monitor CSi A6 Center Channel, a pair of PSW505 subwoofers, and hook it all up with 14AWG Copper Wire.  
Set it up with the RTI A9's playing FR/FL, the A5's running SR/SL, the CSi A6 as Center, and the 45B's as Rear SR/SL and Front Highs or Wides, keeping the speaker wire runs under 20'.  The subwoofers go wherever the room acoustics dictate.
A nice LG 55" local-dimming LED-LCD Television, an HD Cable Box/DVR, a Samsung/LG/Sony Blu-Ray Blayer, and a Game Console (XBox360/PS3), and you have a typical upper-middle-class "Entertainment Room" setup, at least "typical" among the "somewhat better audibly-endowed" bunch.
Let's see...
$2,500-3000 for the Receiver = ~$2750
$675 ea for the RTi A9's = $1350
$400 ea for the RTi A5's = $800
$450 ea for the CSi A6 = $450
$350/pair for the RTi A1's = $700
$400 ea for the PSW505's = $800
$1800 for the Television = $1800
$200 for the BD Player = $200
$300 for the Game Console = $300

That's $9,150 just to get an "above average" home theater setup!!  NO WONDER PEOPLE ARE AFRAID OF HIGH END AUDIO!!!

Start talking about $5,000 DAC's, $125,000 Hand-Crafted speakers, or the RIDICULOUS $1000-25,000 CABLES, and no wonder people blow this off as a bunch of smoke!

I produce music, and I have my favorites when it comes to speakers (both monitors and "listening" speakers), headphones, etc... Some of which are a bit much in price for a "sane" person to fork out, but others which are perfectly reasonable.

We (my employees and I) did a few blind tests of our own.  We were doing some recording, and decided to see if there was ANY audible difference between recording the actual MASTER DISC with AudioQuest cables/interconnects totalling $88,539, or using (the always fantastic) MonoPrice's 12AWG wires and their Banana Plugs.

We re-wired the entire studio a number of times, and did both listening (double-blind: blank CD's other than a number that was put on them by a third party) and instrument-measuring tests.

GUESS WHAT???

NO DIFFERENCE!  NONE!  These are acoustic measuring instruments that cost upwards of $50,000 a piece, measure down to 1/10,000th of a dB, and not a single "high end" cable made more than a 1/500th of a dB difference in Sound Floor, SNR, etc.  The music didn't sound any more "lively", "forward", or anything.

MY ADVICE: Buy nice speakers, get good wire (from Monoprice), and then spend the rest of your money on your family/your loved ones... Music should be something that enhances your life, not takes away from it.
The more you obsess over your equipment, the less you will learn to love the life it is trying so desperately to play into...

great article - and I agree with many of your points - but to combat some of the issues at Audio Lounge we run weekly 'Listens" events which we advertise on social media. Every week we have a packed listening room of non-audiophiles - who enjoy listening to a seminal album on vinyl on one of our flagship systems - and we teach them about high-end audio at the same time. Proving so popular we now have to limit numbers!

www.audiolounge.co.uk

Its really simple and just like every other industry. The high end audio business is full of snake oil. No, I didnt say its all snake oil. Fact is far to many of the products are nothing but and the people selling it are using a sales technique that just doesn't work with either women or the younger generations. Snobbery. Plink plink goes the boring jazz piano. Tum Tum goes the string bass ... out walks the young man with no interest in that. Older fellow with bad sweaters and a big gut pretending to be refined ... out go the ladies.

Its not all that bad but unfortunately most shops are exactly that. Car lots, art dealers etc have all had to adjust. There is money out there. Its being spent. But trying to sell $3000 interconnect cables to an intelligent woman is insulting her. Get it? No one is fooled. They can read. They know the science. When dealers start into that crap, out they go. No time for it.They are not afraid nor timid .. they simply have no time for the insult nor to explain that to you.

I love high end audio. But I see alot of names being put on products that are made alongside others in china. The prices are not alongside though. The interconnect and speaker cable snake oil etc. Its not doing anyone any favors and the longer its ignored the more people will go under. Why tarnish your rep by taking part in what you will be eventually exposed for? Boom trust gone.

Tons of people would spend good money for good product. That includes women and young men who understand their IPOD sucks. They get it. A ton of them would spend 5 - 10k pretty easily too. But they dont want to hear some old guy talk over boring Jazz music ... or should I say talk AT them like they are tools who do not understand that 30k preamp is "sublime". There are people buying that stuff too. I know several. They have the same complaints. The Snobbery and pretend games are not working any better than the old fashioned zig Ziglar car lot sales. Everyone learned those techniques, worked them and came to loathe them.

Talk to people, its amazing what you'll find out when you actually listen instead of trying to lead their opinion. Treat them right and they come back again and again.

People will spend good $ for good product. But the stories and snake oil are fooling no one and visible floaters in your swimming pool.

... is that the high-end audio industry has for 40+ years fallen so far short of the mark i.e. the absolute sound, and to make matters worse it seems very few (maybe a handful) even realizes it.

I'm unaware of such dismal performance in any other industry yet only in this industry are enthusiastics so quick to swallow camels whole while choking on gnats.

For example, the so-called experts are often times so enamored with hi-rez recordings, yet if they were intellectually honest they would realize that hi-rez recordings are most often marginally superior to standard redbook.

What the industry has yet to realize is that while it looks smuggly down on compressed formats like MP3, they have no idea that even their SOTA level $500k+ playback systems' precision and accuracy have been so severly crippled by distortions that only a small percentage of all the music embedded in the recording and processed remains above the noise floor and is audible.

Not too unlike a very blurry picture of a beautiful red Ferrari where the noise floor is so high, one can barely tell it's a Ferrari.

There are a few who acknowledge this serious shortcoming. There's Robert Harley of TAS who in the Mar/Apr 2009 issue speculated, "I believe that something catastrphic occurs at the recording mic's diaphragm so that much of the music never makes it to the recording." Paraphrased. John Atkinson in the Sept 2009 issue declared something not too dissimilar about much of the music never making it to the recording. Then there's my favorite quote by Jonathan Valin of TAS who in circa 2007 said, "We are lucky if even our very best playback systems can capture just 15% of the magic of the live performance."

So in the grander scheme of things, those who think they are in hog heaven with their SOTA-level playback systems having convinced themselves their listening perspective is somewhere in the recording hall, they don't even realize that when compared against the absolute sound, what they hear is actually far closer to that of MP3, even when they swear the sun rises and sets with higher rez recordings.

In other words, the industry is filled with hype, soap bubbles, and bling-bling, but with very little substance.

In the end, for most, high-end audio is really not much different than driving that beautiful red Ferrari back and forth in the driveway, without ever realizing its true performance is out on the open highway.

To make matters worse still, it seems very few are aware and even fewer care. Indeed the emperor has no clothes.

Anyway, that's my first and 2nd guesses for the death of high-end audio.

I honestly believe that they are just Overpriced. Having been friends with a professional installer who sold and installed several brands I can tell you that they are extremely expensive. He would share his cost on the products he sold and the Higher end equipment he sold the more Markup there was. Sometimes 500 or 600%. If that's the price it takes to do business these days then it will die. The average Joe just can't afford these products. I think that's why online retailers are winning the battle. They just don't have the overhead. Just my opinion