What does 90% of the Absolute Best Sound Cost?

If you eliminate the hype, the sales pitches and the peer pressure, you'd be surprised at how good your system can sound.  Once you step outside yourself for a moment, you realize that it's all rather ephemeral and like already mentioned, relative. 

It's like all addictions in that there's that reward at first listen, and then it fails to maintain the high, and then it's on to the next hit. That's not being a lover of music.  

So, what does $50K get you? Sound that you'll enjoy or even fall in love with. The question is, will you allow it to as long as you have it, or tire of it because, reasons. 

All the best,
Nonoise

Ah, great responses.  I wish I could "like" and "laugh" at them.  Yep, this is a very subjective topic and, of course, the listening room - size, dimensions, build - is a major factor.

And I have to acknowledge that the listening experience goes beyond the bare acoustics.  I like how my equipment looks and feels. I like nice furniture and lighting.  And a bar cart with a few choice adult beverages doesn't hurt.

Trust me, folks ... it’s the room AND the power.

As to the room, I have a square, 10x9x8 converted upstairs bedroom for dedicated listening, which is an awful configuration for sound. Left untreated, the sound is absolutely horrible, and I mean "fingernails on a blackboard" horrible. Before I gave up completely or continued on the component upgrade merry-go-round, I implemented corner bass traps, rear wall absorption, and side-wall first reflection point panels. I’m very happy with the results.

As to the power, I determined that there was a lot of dirt in the lines, but dedicated lines were not feasible. So, I got items that remove line hash at various frequencies, and series mode surge protection. Those did the job ... sound clarity and headroom have improved dramatically. The neat thing is that I no longer have inconsistent listening sessions where the sound is great on one day and not so good on the next. Addressing the power issue is just as important as the room.

Of course, quality components are essential and don’t have to cost you an arm and a leg. However, failing to address room and power issues, no matter how good the components, can be fatal to the listening experience. So, before the OP goes spending a lot of dough, I think that first scoping out the listening environment is critical to good sound ultimately.

This is subjective based on room size, room acoustics, and the audiophiles ability to discern subtle differences in sound quality between brands and components,

for as you go to higher price point equipment, the absolute value of the performance/price ratio becomes smaller.  Differences perceived important to one listener may not be important to another.  That said, from my personal perspective a spend of around $75k should get to 95% of the best of the best.  If you buy preowned you can take 30% off of that spend.  To me, I believe my system is at the 95% performance level at a retail cost of around $90k and a preowned cost of about $45k.  I would have to double that spend to achieve a 2 or 3% improvement and much more because my small home and listening room would need expansion to accommodate the equipment required to achieve improvement.   My home is my limiting factor.  My weakest link now is my server/streamer where I would need to double or triple my spend.  

Interesting question. For the sake of discussion I'm going to use retail prices for this exercise. Obviously you could do much better by buying used equipment, which, like you, I did, but I'm trying to compare apples to apples.

The core of my system is from the mid 1990's (Krell KSA 300S, Krell KRC-2, Thiel CS6 speakers, Velodyne subwoofer). If I take the original retail prices and adjust for inflation those pieces would cost about $35,000 today. I've got several DACs, two transports, two turntables, tape decks, and other gear but I'm going to figure my total system cost with my best DAC, transport, and turntable. At retail (inflation adjusted dollars)  my total system today would have cost about around $60K. For perspecitve, my actual cost is around $25,000 (I bought most of my gear used).

I've been to three audio shows and heard dozens of high end systems. I'm pretty comfortable in saying that my system hits the 90% target of the best sound regardless of price. I've heard a couple of million dollar systems and a bunch of six figure systems and very few of them sounded significantly better than my setup. I've heard far more systems that I thought sounded great but not particularly better than my rig.

A few speakers have stood out - Von Schweikert Ultra 11 ($325k), large Acoras ($200k+), and especially MBL 101E Mk II ($90k). These systems definitely reached a level beyond what I can coax out of my system but at an astromical price. On the other hand I've heard several speakers under $25k that sounded wonderful, if not quite state of the art. One speaker that bowled me over was the Rosso Fiorintino Fiesole (around $21k). I'm looking forward to hearing other models in their line.

I'm at the stage of my life where I could afford a significant upgrade but I'm not sure where to go from here. I'm afraid that I could drop a significant amount of money and a lot of hassle on new gear without getting much benefit.

From my experience I would say that $50,000 spent today easily reaches 90% of the best sound money can buy.