Few people have ever developed a musical sense of sound, especially that of acoustic instruments and their subtleties. I suspect this is because the pop music with which we are inundated in public places and on most radio stations was essentially made for harsh Sony and Alpine car systems w/ thumpin' bass, or for computer speakers, or even for phones and MP3 players. It was conceived of from its very beginning as a sequence of thumps, saccharine riffs, insipid squeaking, anything but a rich and complex mix of tones. If that's what people want to listen to, I certainly don't begrudge them that... but to such people, the refinements of AR and Vandersteen are understandably irrelevant.
Why Don't More People Love Audio?
Can anyone explain why high end audio seems to be forever stuck as a cottage industry? Why do my rich friends who absolutely have to have the BEST of everything and wouldn't be caught dead without expensive clothes, watch, car, home, furniture etc. settle for cheap mass produced components stuck away in a closet somewhere? I can hardly afford to go out to dinner, but I wouldn't dream of spending any less on audio or music.