The death of ultra hiend audio

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.

@pickindoug +1. Very well said. Its all about building a system that brings you joy for what you are willing and able to spend. Its not a competition- its what works for each of us, all with different ears, tastes and budgets.

I am not sure I can describe what the "ultra high end" means. I have seen systems not in shows but in brick-and-mortar stores that approach seven figures. I suspect those are sold to very few for undisclosed amounts while those products are halos meant to light the way for buyers to more affordable gear made by the same maker or sold by the same dealer. Other stuff is nearly purely bespoke, custom cabinets, drivers sourced at auction, built by specialized craftsmen who duplicate nearly every step in the manufacture of an original many decades out of production for the very rarefied group of fans/buyers who may travel to other parts of  the world just to hear a special setup. There is only so much of a market for those things and the market is expressed by the costly development of new materials and products and the equally costly need for roadshows arranged to draw the interested.  Then there is the other high-end market, disparaged by some as appealing to "lifestyle" buyers, which is to say people with money who have expectations that high priced gear be made so it can be compatible with well-furnished living spaces and sound good. Usually that excludes vintage technologies and favors makers that consider good design and engineering that delivers performance without imposing on living space, so B&O, Linn, Dutch&Dutch, Grimm, Kii and others find buyers among whose not-unreasonable needs they meet. 

How many people were buying premium Marantz tube preamps in the day, or high-end turntables or Tandberg reel-to-reel decks? Not very many. Most people who might have chosen to buy a better sound system might have bought what my aunts each bought, a KLH Model 20, an all-in-one TT-receiver (AM and FM, germanium transistors--"solid state")  and those were seen as not-inexpensive systems for people who liked recorded music. There wasn’t a market for stratospheric gear, it didn’t exist. The ultra high-end as we are referring to is a phenomenon of the past  30 or so years.

Consumers have moved on. Financial pressures in the costs of ordinary things, attractions of portable audio, wireless audio technologies, audio in cars, laptops that can host whole high-definition collections ready to stream to a BT speaker or wireless home system, the disappearance of the recorded  "album". Who is meeting these consumers? Smartphone makers, web content distributors like Spotify and Tidal, Amazon and Apple, Chi-Fi developers that deliver inexpensive and decent-quality components that make buying a sound system an attractive and low-risk proposition. Producers of gear at nosebleed prices almost nobody can afford? Not so much.

@chenry I concur and have nothing to add. Excellent post. Thank you!

I actually think when you invest in the very best you forget who keeps you in business: it’s the average Joe that is your Bread & Butter. Look at Verity audio, why did they need a million dollar speaker? Investing that much in a their Monsalvat speaker had to bankrupt them. I bet they didn’t even sell 3 pairs if even that.