I took a friend to CES/The SHOW about 20 years ago. He told me I was crazy spending $50k or more on an audio system. He thought it couldn’t get much better than his $2000 system and he thought he couldn’t hear that well.
After the 1st room, he had to pick up his jaw off the floor. Now he understood why people spend $$$ for a system. I spent almost $10k on my 2nd audio system in the late 70’s. It sounded very nice for its day, but technology has changed (as well as the increase in prices) but todays systems for the same price you paid 50 years ago sounds much better today.
I have multiple $2000-$5000 systems in my house, which would very nice, especially for background music. But compared to my reference system that cost more than 10x, the sq is much much better in my reference system, we are not talking about a couple % differences, we are talking night and day difference.
BTW: if I take 1 of my $2000 integrated amp and modified it to the hilt, it will never ever get close to my reference preamp/amp that cost 15x more. The modified $2000 amp will still have the same character sound when it was stock.