Very true about control of room acoustics. However, all else being equal in that dimension:
Helped a friend, who had been without home hi-fi for decades, set up a new system for a smallish listening space. $1100 Cambridge streamer/DAC/digital preamp, no TT, no analog preamp, no CD player, no tape deck, Schiit Vidar power amp, great deal at $700, Martin-Logan 60 series tower speakers, high efficiency, equally great deal at $1,000 closeout with dual 8" subwoofers for each channel. Having plenty of surplus quality speaker cables and interconnects, I gifted him those.
So we get him set up and he plays Spotify from the Cambridge straight into the Vidar. His family's ears perked up. Never heard reproduced sound like that. Daughter brought her friends over to listen. Wife in kitchen asked for more volume. Clearly hi-fi TO THEM.
Well, not to me, and not to 99% of contributors here. Pleasant? Sure. But exchange it for an Aurender streamer, a $1,500+ outboard DAC, play Qobuz not Spotify, add $900 Schiit tube preamp or just 6SN7 tube buffer, add bass array or just upgrade to Legacy towers with 10" or 12" dual subs, and he would have an order of magnitude superior SQ with clear & convincing low bass. To me, a fine example of taking lower-fi to higher-fi, not relative to some absolute standard of fidelity levels, but simply relative to each other. Spend more, get more and you're still coming in at $15,000 range, which is peanuts in Agon's rarefied air, and which friend could easily afford if he cared enough.
