What makes up an

I think that's an expression that can be filed away. One time it meant products that were produced by dedicated engineers and designers who wanted more than the commercial electronics of the 60's and 70's and developed a following that became an underground market of sorts. They took financial risks, some became rich, some gone broke, to redefine the audio art. Today, mega companies such as Marantz and Sony push out comparable - if not better - products for less money. Products that heavily borrowed concepts from these high end loners but with the economies of scale they could only dream of.

Today, there are some following the same independent, risk taking such as Magico and YG Acoustics attempting to go one above the commercial fare, but they do not comparably blow the socks off the larger Wilsons, Thiels, etc., the way Levinson and Pass trounced amplification back in the 70's.

That's why IMO it doesn't apply any more - the market is saturated with excellent gear, accessories and services at every price point making you hard-pressed to justify price equating to performance. One only has to look at all those Stereophile Class A components to realize that almost anything you buy nowadays is based on preference rather than a definitive pecking order.

Detlof, I don't take the Stereophile list seriously:) You know how many dealers can tell you stories about customers walking in with that as a grocery shopping list and stubbornly refusing to consider advice about alternatives or incompatibilites? You could, with ease, put together an atrocious system with just those Class A components. As I'm sure many have done.

Mrtennis: I think that the listener can never be taken out of the equation and acheiving the objective standard of a hierarchy is futile. Different people experience the same event with a different perspective. There are physiological differences, tastes, perceptions, prejudices and different levels of satisfaction entailed in all that. You would have to have a perfect human being as a point of reference to build the scale. What sounds great to a speaker designer voicing his product may sound like fingernails on the blackboard to some regardless of the specs as Detlof states above. I personally have never been partial to Krell products. Great stuff and nothing against them, but just not to my liking. And they out-spec my teeny 2A3 amp in every way. But I'll never part with that because it gets me to where I want to be. That, to me, is how I would define 'high-end' to begin with.