So beyond a vague price-point the whole exercise dissolves into a pissing contest on who’s spent the most money on the biggest/most miniaturised, most technologically advanced/esoterically contrived audio microscope…with, I suspect, few instances of the assemblage being used in appropriate ‘clean room’ conditions. Again, if you’re wealthy enough to pursue particle physics in the realms of diminishing returns…have at it, I say…just,
please do it properly, is all I’d whinge about…like the cats with the LHC/CERN and get the environment right.
None of them talks about the concrete mass they sunk into the foundations to absorb ground waves or the base isolation and diffusion materials used to tame a feral 200Hz frequency build up in the back corner of the room. It’s not as sexy as dropping a casual $7K on a hand carved, 24C gold wired, jewel-ruby stylused, lignum vitae turntable cart…
Eliminating all the peripheral crap between the media and the listener, in the way headphones eliminate most of the environment (except for the psycho-acoustic metaphysical environmental influence otherwise eliminated by VR sets or listening with your eyes closed in a sensory deprivation tank?), the next “format shift” could be the development of DNCs (digital neural convertors) where the listener plugs a wireless node into a connection in the brain stem to stream audio/visual data direct
…sell your shares in JBL, B+W, Genelec, Adam, etc now…you read it here first
Hell, maybe spend a few thou each year hosting some live performances at the pad instead of amassing a mess of blinking boxes and cables and share the experience of real music, untainted and uncoloured by the recording media complex, loud and direct…but they probably do that as well (let’s hope) anyway
…I suspect though, that it’s more about the quantifiable ($) measure of competitive perversion…right on.