Today Hi-Fi is a niche.
The heyday of Hi-Fi was the late 1960s into the early 1980s. Sales volumes were relatively large, build quality was excellent and prices were moderate considering what you got.
Today, there's so little product sold; the companies are literally guys in a small shops either building them by hand or having them built in China.
And to sell them, you've got to take out ads in niche publications, show up to small trade shows, send out review copies to people on the internet all of which cost a lot of money. And of course you've got to have guys who service, answer the phone, and give the appearance that you're a real company. That overhead has to be recovered somewhere, and it's the price of the product.