deep_333,
I heard from a friend of mine that he gets a lot of the stuff for free on consignment to showcase it from dealers so when he says that he’s paying for all of it I highly doubt he is and my friend confirm that, he told me that he strong arms A lot of dealers to get this real expensive stuff that nobody can afford unless they’re a millionaire, and I’ve heard the Rockport Lyra’s in person and I wasn’t that impressed for $200,000 speaker you would think it would have a more three-dimensional sound stage and more enveloping sounds stages as well, like they say the law of diminishing returns you don’t need to spend that much to get an excellent speaker, the monitor audio platinum 500 ll was $35,000 and they would absolutely destroy the Rockport Lyra.
I have been associated with a couple of private listservs with guys who actually buy high end since the early 2000s...membership was strict for obvious reasons. It was used as a coms platform/social circle primarily to swap/ audit gear between ourselves without having to buy everything. Typically, the houses of these guys look "happening" (been to a few) and the listening rooms are not repurposed garages, i.e., it would make sense to some that a guy who drops 300k+ on audio equipment any fine day would typically have more going on in certain other walks of life. Along those lines, it never added up with the dude running a "lab" in his garage, was a flag from the start.
No new guy can get an honest opinion on anything these days without this type of deception in the middle of it (enough of them exist on this very forum).