Actually, Raul, you made the point. This is a hobby for an overconsuming society, where look-ophilia, prestige based on price and brand-recognition is more important than the original purpose of the hobby: realistic music reproduction. The high end industry is turned to serve taste niches, and professional journalism is serving this trend instead of providing honest and critical views and reporting about cases of badge manufacturing, or technically flawed products. Most of the serious companies with real technical background have withdrawn from the industry, and small firms without real RandD capacity and technological backing dominating the market. Customers are lacking the technical background, and maybe also they have only shallow experiences as far as live music concerned. As far as me concerned, I had my own bad purchases and constant disappointment in searching something similar to live music experience withing the limits of home reproduction. Finally, I have found real value in professional products done by big professional firms to real professionals at real world price level. From this position, it is really funny to hear how many highly expensive audiophile system provides very interesting, nice, exciting, but fatally flawed and very coloured sound.
