The term "High End" needs to die. Long live Hi-Fidelity!

The heart of the original proposition, I think, was to consider that money does not always equal best quality.  Since I'm getting close to meeting my maker, I had the opportunity in the 50's and 60's to build amps out of various magazines--and found that a very good quality could be had for very cheap if you were a bit of an engineer. I went on to become a physicist, but never lost my love for designing and building my own amps.  For a while in the 90's I tried to share DIY kits and ideas via forums, but found that the heyday of home engineers had passed.  I had enough money back then to spend on the "high-end" stuff, nevertheless found it fairly easy to build something for a 1/10 or 1/100 of the price that was the equal or better in sound quality.  Naturally, because of the ease in building them I gravitated toward tube designs.  

It would be nice to see a real resurgence of DIY movement--it could certainly give the super expensive stuff a second option.  Consider for a minute a "Macintosh" type power mono-block, built in China for less than $200-$300 and sold in America for $3000-$5000, or $15,000-$30,000 with the right marketing and name recognition.  It may have some bells and whistles that are hard to add as a DIY, but then most of them are not needed if you are the user and can control your environment.  


Well, I'm pretty much out of date with everything today, but it is fun to ramble.  Thanks for listening.

Well said CD318

At the end of the day, your ear is really the only reliable personal testing tool.  I have designed many, many amps of every type and have never found electrical measurements of distortion, IM, etc, useful except as a first cut to make sure you are designing in the right direction and have not made a gross mistake.  The completion of designs always involved multiple listening sessions with musicians and music lovers to zero in on the best options and tradeoffs.  Very seldom did the final choices agree with the 'best' measured specs.  The only exception to this rule was in the bass response area--best reproduction there was almost always in agreement with listening tests.

This is not actually surprising.  Experiments in listening back in the 50's, for example, determined that a very small amount of high frequency hiss improves the perceived enjoyment of the audio experience.  (Say hello to Vinyl!)  Other experiments have noted that the huge frequency non-linearity of human hearing greatly outweighs spec measurements--and that on a person-by-person basis.  I have an acquaintance in New Zealand who has a million dollar sound system that is absolutely terrible.  Every component was bought on the basis of reviews and price, and it is almost non-listenable.  He, nevertheless, is very happy with his system and loves to talk about the price of each element while playing the music.

One final observation:  Live music should always be listened to (a lot) by designers.  The trap is to go for esoteric things that can be tested, like the best design for hearing percussive wood blocks, and so on.  As a violinist and orchestra player I was very familiar with the sound instruments and even different specific instruments played by the masters.  Pinchas Zukerman played my violin once, and I knew exactly what his Strad sounded like.  Thus, when I designed I sought to reproduce the 'true' live sound experience--which is definitely NOT the same as designing by spec.

Cheers!