Regardless of my financial capability, I will always be the frugal audiophile. Same holds true for my other passion, guitar/bass playing. I generally buy high quality used gear in both categories. I am smack in the middle of boomer land. I worked in a nice family owned electronics store in the 1970s and, between that and my earlier tube amp kit / speaker building hobby, I became an audiophile for life. While at the store, I made a whopping $90 per week take home, plus some bonuses for targeted products. A Pioneer SX-727 sold fair trade for $300 at that time. Mid fi was over twice my $125 monthly rent! Fast forward to now. I have two systems anchored by either Altec 604 or Magnepans with appropriate (except digital sources) vintage electronics to feed them. Went on a road trip with an audio friend to an Atlanta high end store. Listened to the very same Dave Grusin track I heard at home the night before on a system priced at $250k (McIntosh + Sonus Faber + Lumin), and left the store thinking my ragtag stuff was, to my ears, equally enjoyable even if not remotely capable of producing the same SPL. So that's comment 1. The second point is, back in that SX-727 timeframe, music, and especially new music, the latest LP from a favorite artist, was a reason to gather together with friends to enjoy together. That was one of the reasons folks wanted a shareable system vs today's portables. Yesterday's portables were the walkman, Discman, ipod, etc, but they were accessories to extend the home system, not replace it. But, things change. And us boomers think (know) we had the best music ever. How does this relate to the original topic? Well, the other thing that has happened to audio gear is the scale of diminishing returns has also changed. While the ultra high end will always be better, the distance between it and high end that is affordable for many is a lot closer than it used to be. And if the boomers are the life support for what's left of the high end market, it will continue to shrink.
The death of ultra hiend audio
Verity and DarTzeel last year, now MBL, ultra high end audio manufacturers are facing their demise and they have nobody but themselves to blame. What do these companies have in common: too much investment in creating the very best and when that fails raising their prices bottom up to recover their losses and inevitably charging 2x what the same product cost just a few years ago. Ego, greed and poor management can only result in one thing!