Bad news for audiophiles?

Results not surprising in the least. And to take it further, if you took that $10 bottle of wine and put it on the shelf at $90 with a "Sale $45" sticker under it, you'd sell a lot more than you do at $10. THAT is the audiophile industry, arbitrarily assign prices with ridiculous margins so that you have plenty of room to offer the customer a "deal".

Just as a wine connoisseur would be able to detect the value of the $10.00 bottle of wine, and stock up on it, the true and experienced audiophile would be able to detect the value of a cheaper amplifier compared to a much more expensive one; I'll give you a case in point.

I'm going to compare the mighty ARC to a cheaper amp, and I don't use the term "mighty Arc" in jest. As far as resolution it might be considered king, but that, "in my opinion" is at the expense of a tad of "soul". While the Primaluna Monoblocks, with NOS tubes comes close in resolution, but not at the expense of "soul", in the music; they can be tailored to suit the audiophile's taste by careful selection of tubes.

I don't know how, or in which way this comes close to the analogy of the $10. and $90. dollar bottle of wine, but you got my drift, and you can tell me how close this analogy comes, and or how it misses?

There are so many facets of live music which must be rendered as close to ideally as possible in order to [even remotely] fool the listener into believing the replication via components indeed shares enough [of theses] traits to border on reality... It is mind boggling and essentially impossible. That said however, the more of these "Lifelike nuances" captured and transferred through the system, obviously the less work your brain must do to fool oneself. Trouble is it is not just the obvious tasks that make up the most influential "Believability factors", but the far more difficult subtleties the are key. Gross emphasis or lack of inclusion such as TOO or NOT ENOUGH : Bass, top end extensipn, brightness, dullness, 3d effect, soundstage width, depth, etc... All must be properly present and much can be handled with moderately priced components... But it often tales the pricier products to add the less tangibles...

Typo: last sentence should read "It often taKes..."

so the point is to drink while listening to audio?