The amount of money that some folks are able and willing to expend on this hobby these days always makes me wonder why the high-end industry stops short of trying to exceed the present paradigm of reproduced sound. It seems to me that instead of wringing hands and waiting to see what new digital format or channel configuration will prevail in the battles of the big boys - who aren't selling their products based on audiophile criteria - the high-end could form an industry consortium of their own to originate a perfectionist approach to recording, software, and system parameters that could be adopted by audiophiles and the high-end industry alone. Yes, such an effort would be very expensive, as would the resulting hardware and recordings. It would also have to be backward-compatible in some way with existing formats and software. But given the amounts of cash that some of us are apparently ready to throw at mere refinements of old technology and tweaks that don't significantly advance the illusion of recreating the original performance, and the prices that are already paid for vintage records of audiophile interest, I can imagine such an all-out assault actually reinvigorating the business. In general, the new paradigm would focus on completely integrated systems (forget the separate components, mix-'n'-match approach), be multi-channel and all-digital in nature, and would require purpose-built dedicated listening environments (the answer to the thrust of the original question is the listening room, by the way - on par with software and above speakers). The recording process would be an integral part of this system, utilizing a purist audiophile-grade chain and agreed-upon microphone techniques to enable predictable multi-channel reproduction. The digital recording and storage media and all signal proccessing would have to be accomplished using a data density exceeding theoretical distortion and detection limits of electronics and the human ear. The number of discrete audio channels would be determined solely by what is acoustically required for transparent soundfield immersion (my own guess is eight, minimum). Maybe the system would even run off of a dedicated, high-power utility line incompatible with other household devices. Whatever it takes. And whatever it may be - whether a complete room/system cost a million dollars and recordings cost hundreds each - I bet that buyers would come forth and ante up. Such is the power of music (and money). And the rest of us mortals would still have what we've got today. (But I, for one, would not feel much the poorer for it, since I primarily listen to vintage records and reissues from the golden ages of rock and roll, DIY punk, studio pop, jazz, rhythm and blues, etc., where the signature [read: distorted] sound of the recording [analog and often mono] and the medium [often less than pristine] is as important to the atmosphere of the record as the performance itself!)
