The infamous

Plato, to my mind you plead your case very well and I have no reason to argue the point, that for the amount you've mentioned, you can have a high degree of musical enjoyment in your home and can even forget about the system and just listen to the music. But then there is that rare breed of "fanatics", who are intimately familiar with all sorts of live music and strive to come as close as possible to that experience with their rigs and here the curve of deminishing returns ( always in regard to the live event ) rises much less sharply as you might think. That is why Albert's numbers are indeed perfectly reasonable and - should you belong to that "breed" - quite within normal limits.

I have to step in with Detlof's post above -- and with Albert's numbers. I have failed to get a "lower-cost" system transport me with the sound, say, of a symphony orchestra...

Furthermore, my experience has been that, over a certain level of speaker price (and design quality, I suppose), the cost of amplification required to get the "utmost" from the speakers becomes astronomical!!

My most recent experience with this is a 1:2 price ratio between speaker & amplification. Going beyond that didn't yield significant improvement (to my ears, ofcourse).

This said, I wholeheartedly agree that great tunes emanate from well matched, reasonably costing, systems. But I bet that the speakers many of us own could sing even better with amps we cannot afford (or do not wish to purchase).

Cheers!

What is more dangerous? For an audiophile to show the bottom of his wallet (the limit they will not go beyond) to another audiophile (better: to a dealer), or: for a playboy to show a seductress the bottom of their heart.
--For me, Albert's upper limits are exactly on the mark. You could easily spend more, but that is where the parabolic laws of performance set in. --The bad side of spending a fortune on a system is that when one has everything set up and sees that one is not happy with it, it is no longer possible to reverse direction, and these upper limits may increase with time (due to the audiophilic passion, the audio market and to the economy). --The economy is more and more the fever of people sick for fortune, where the agonizing reigns most of the time. The European high-end world seethes with gluttons of Paradise. I know one audiophile with one foot in the madhouse for having wanted to obtain all of the most expensive components for his system within a short period of time. I know a gambler who is in prison for having wanted to obtain his "world-class" system from the proceeds of his roulette wagers. I know a wealthy French man who signed a contract of purchase for a $220,000 audio system at the age of 72 "so that God--and my family--can not get a penny from me when I die." After the purchase of his complete system I can imagine him saying to himself: "Now I've got everything, I have nothing more to desire." But, in fact, when one thinks about it, does this man still belong to himself? --To conclude, Albert's upper limits seem right, even in Europe. I cannot justify to myself spending more than THAT on the basis of my audio priorities.

Well spoken Slawney! Luckily my system only grew slowly through the years and always in reference (and reverence!)
to live music as I percieved it.

The most relevant aspect of answering the question is understanding what a person's goal is. There are obviously a lot of people on this site (and with the audiophile passion) who are significantly more involved in the pursuit than I am - they play one or more instruments themselves, perhaps professionally, go to orders of magnitude more live concerts, and are willing to spend a lot more time on their system to find that which is "just right". These are the people who are going to get justifiably more by spending large amounts on their systems. Pls1 has described several times his involvment in music, his wife's common passion, and his financial ability to pursue state-of-the-art reproduction at home - he should spend a lot more than many others. I, on the other hand, listen to different genres of music, and really am just looking for very pleasing sound that is convenient, and am not going to take the time to get that last ounce of performance. I also don't want to deal with amps that heat my basement, or a system that I have to warm up for an hour. I've got a decent room for listening, but it's not that big and far from perfect, which also limits what "makes sense" for me to spend.

So, give me more time and more space, I'd spend more and see it as a reasonable choice. As it is, $20-25K builds a system for me that I see little reason to think about much more and instead just use. -Kirk