The term "High End" needs to die. Long live Hi-Fidelity!

Agreed. So it is by no means exclusive to the audio hobby.

Agreed Erik High Fidelity!

I kind of agree especially with the snob aspect, but...the trouble with "hi-fidelity" is there is no comparison implied. Literally anything can be called hi-fidelity, and has been over the years. Hi-fidelity compared to...a piece of chewing gum? On the other hand "high end" implies a favourable comparison to other lesser grade audio gear. You can’t really call something high end if it's in the lower half of all quality levels. I do like hi-fidelity though. It’s nice.

@whostolethebatmobile, yes some form of distinction of accuracy needs to be found but ‘High End’ is obviously flawed (despite what Robert Harley may have written) as it usually suggests that high price equates to high performance.

That is just not true.

Perhaps it’s time to return to meaningful and relevant data and measurements, such as the ones that the designers and engineers themselves use.

Sure it risks us being manipulated or being ‘blinded by science’ but what other sure way of moving forwards is there?

Why let a word knock one around when one can grow up instead?

Why push one's solitary and personal opinion upon others.. as if they have to eat it- and then they reflect it back -- in order to validate the self?

20 years of isolation of persons in social media has brought us to this point...

You'll be waiting a long time, as the isolation of self and individual applied and integrated social media has killed the act and motion of humanity's social fabric.

functional social fabric requires being in the same space and breathing the same air, smelling it, the works. rubbing elbows, seeing the motions, hearing the voice, all if it. Nothing less will do. Millions of years of evolution brought you to that point.

You can't change that in the comparatively microseconds that the internet has been around.

Forums, and the web...by definition... are a communication almost fully without meaning or context.

So we yell louder and get angrier, our sonar pinging harder and harder, but nothing comes back.

In the case of Facebook and google, they get be to the the inter-layer handler, the coloring of the moment and the message.  Danger Will Robinson, danger. See it for what it is.

So we keep having these threads that mean jack and go nowhere.

Each new one more virulent than the last.

Go outside, meet music and audio fans in person. Otherwise you are arguing with the mirror and nothing else.

Human beings require social fabric in order to function correctly.

And this ain't social fabric.  Information? sure. Data? Sure. Social fabric? Not a chance.

Says Ken, who has been aware of the coming mess we are living in now....since the late 80's and early 90's when I moved onto the beginnings of the internet and watched it form - helped it form.