Has anyone made the jump to $uper High end and were disappointed?

@jji666 - fair point, and the conventional wisdom is that speakers and audio systems in general should be genre agnostic...
The presentation will be enhanced by a better system in my estimation. I use horns in my main system and though those aren’t necessarily more expensive than dynamic speakers, they do a marvelous job in dynamic swings- (the so-called "jump" factor). I play rock on my vintage Quad ESLs too, and they give a different perspective without the dynamics, sheer volume or scale (though as a smaller portrait in miniature they can sound fabulous with well recorded rock).
We attended the King Crimson show in Austin a few nights ago, and it was fun to take in the latest live recording on LP- the Toronto 2016 recordings for a morning after "hair of the dog." No way could I reproduce the sheer volume and sock of all three drum kits and the depth of some of the synth and bass guitar sounds with all of the power of a 2900 seat auditorium in my comparatively smaller listening room, but it sounded pretty good. (It’s a good live recording too).
All the criteria used to differentiate sound quality applies, at least to my ears- yes, I use real instruments as a reference and want to evaluate a system hearing a grand piano-- often a very difficult instrument to record and reproduce faithfully--but much of what I listen to--early post psych/pre-prog folk and hard rock sounds wonderful on system capable of high quality reproduction.
The fault often isn’t even the amplified v. acoustic instruments; to me, the shortcomings in a lot of popular music have to do with the quality of the recording. The era I’m fond of-- late ’60s, very early ’70s- was typically fewer tracks, often less outboard processing and in many cases, less overdubbing. (Not to say that the studio concoctions in the ’70s sound bad when the engineer because auteur rather than just recordist, but the risk is greater when the studio wizardry falls flat). The bands also didn’t have the crutch of being able to punch in a better take- they could and often did play through the whole song in a take and that can sound better than some Franken-recording sewn together from parts. You can hear the room, the position of the instruments and get a better sense of the stage if recorded that way (and not manipulated to hell and back in mixing and other post-production "magic.")
And, without the ability to do 100 takes and stitch together a "perfect" recording from multiple takes and overdubs, the natural acoustic, such that it is, along with bleed through, gives a coherence to the sound that is equally telling.
The other reality for me is that I’m not listening to audiophile recordings. Some just aren’t great sounding. And there, no matter how good or bad the system, it isn’t going to WOW you with sonics- the goosebumps come from the composition and performance.
The question -- I guess it should be rhetorical-- is how much one limits their listening by the sonic quality of the recordings. I can’t live on a diet of audiophile warhorses, and like all kinds of stuff, from pop to proto-metal to hard psych as well as some of the more adventurous material that defies genre.

Great Thread...I really enjoy reading this forum weekly...Thanks!

I dare say not one person here were they to hit the power ball some weekend, that they wouldn’t rush out and buy some ridiculously high ticket gear once the funds were made available .

So merely for the purposes of ‘closure’ , if everyone wants to start a fund so I can get out there, buy a lot of stuff and then report back, I’m all in on being the lab monkey for that project! Really! I would not mind it at all.

I think until that happens enmasse’, or at least by me, the demographic being sought for feedback on this topic will remain silent.

So far I’ve seen one post saying ‘no regrets’ in the ultra high end shell game. Albeit there was no quantification or qualification on the gear acquired or removed.

As one poster previously said, folks with uber ultra dough just don’t knock about these forums much. Apparently not.

For the rest of us, it is all about what we hear, prefer and desire, and perhaps a few other insidious out of whack character traits which seem far more compeling.

Plain boredom can fuel change, it ain’t always about pursuing excellence..

I once saw a pair of Avalong idolons someone had hand painted white. Not a great job either. Their price however at that point was very attractive as near giveaways. The folks who traded them in were quite wealthy and had other obvious priorities when it came to music, ala, ‘décor’. For the man to keep them his wife made him paint them.

To say ONLY speakers or any other single item is the key is flatly ridiculous.

It takes no time at all and darn little investment to begin with just popular speakers $3 to $5K or less perhaps, and start migrating in and out pieces to see what is different and what is ‘subjectively’ better, or not. Unless, of course one is either deaf, brain dead, or can not be honest appraising the results.

Why more expensive? Not every thing made is made the same way, or with the same items, or in the same fashion, an therefore in degrees, sounds unlike the rest.

the rig I’ve put the most money and time into attending to synergy gives the greatest involvement and resolution, or illusions of reality. All the talk of measurements in the world will not deter me from knowing experience, and money do matter in achieving loftier heights of musical presentations because I have like many others, financial limits. Without any limits I tend to think I’d be a lot more capricious with audio gear, and at times, esthetics alone could be a deciding factor.

Ssynergy’ not speakers is the biggest most expensive cost as it involves time, experience and investigation with equipment, rooms and the associated lists thereafter are varied and lengthy.

If one has not yet discovered, in this past time, there is absolutely no, ‘one size fits all’ anything.

I’ve heard as have other posters here, rigs I would not buy with someone else’ money. All about details and not about the music. Too dry. Too wet. Too…. ? and sure, too expensive to justify getting.

Not having great knowledge is easy to overcome. It slows one down but won’t usually stop or hurt them too much. What I think I know can be even more of a pitfall. What bites me on the butt everytime however, is those things I know which simply are not so.

Thus far the axiom “Everything matters” still has merit as applied to building an outstanding audio rig. I doubt those with bottomless pockets feel anywhere near as strongly on this ideology for their’s is the freedom to move about at will experiencing various degrees of cool, great, and beyond with regret or remorse playing inconsequential roles.

But again, I’m certainly willing to find out for sure if anyone wants to start up a Patrion account I can draw from!

10,000 members at $10 each, every month, yep, should take no time at all to find out exactly where the demon of diminishing returns lives in the more than $50K item shelves.

During the past year I have upgraded both my headphone system and my main speaker system. The total price for the headphone rig (dac, amp, headphones was <$1000 and the sound is incredible. I think the law of diminishing returns would kick in big time beyond that price point. The same could be said about my main system <$5000.

OK, time for me to fess up. Someone asked a little while ago if anyone went the opposite direction from upgrading to a super high end system. Guilty as charged.

Two years ago I had a rather good but not terribly expensive headphone system with pure tube Woo Audio headphone Amp with all NOS Tung Sol and Sylvania tubes, a VERY modded Oppo DC player, including the Linear Power Supply mod, Analysis Plus ICs and Power Cord and Nordost Blue Heaven power cord. Oh, two count em Herbies tube dampers per tube for total of 6. I used cryo’d, naked Sennheiswr 600s with Stephan Arts cabling with that system.

Since then, just for experimentation, I went to a much simpler system based around a Sony Walkman portable CD player and Sony Walkman cassette player with Grado SR-60 headphones. I have no power cords, no interconnects and no speaker cables. I also have no power transformers, no grounding issues (since I dint have a ground), no fuses, no house AC, no big honking capacitors, no digital cable. I already got out of ye olde room acoustics game with the last system. No more teacher’s dirty looks. 😜