I suggest one can take the article at multiple layers. The audio achievement...impressive; the family's life...somewhat tragic.
Things have got to be pretty serious to disown a son. Perhaps it wasn't solely audio that caused that, but still, that's tremendously sad and I would view as the largest failure in my life it it happened.
It's also an allegory - plenty of the greatest-of-all-time type famous people have paid similar prices for their success, and there seems to be a two-way interaction between the price and the achievement.
It is an interesting point - if your hobby was golf, travel, wine, etc., you'd have nothing to sell at the end and so you don't get your money back. That seems like it would be reasonably true in audio as well, albeit there is some salvageable value there.
I'd hope my kids would want some of my stuff. But probably not - they really only need these tiny screens that fit in their pockets.