Oh, to be a high end dealer for a year.

Clearly some high end companies have endured while others have not. I cannot even begin to explain what has kept companies like Gryphon, Wilson, Krell, and many others around in these times of economic contraction. I can only assume that there are enough people with money and an interest in this hobby to make this a reality.
Whether or not a mega expensive system sounds considerably better than a well assembled, moderately expensive system is purely in the mind of the beholder as it will always be.

I have been a "high end" dealer for decades; not at todays ultra level but selling Krell, Classe, B&W, Quad, SME, VPI etc at various times. The market has contracted so much that many companies have had to specialize to an extreme degree and produce a very expensive product to survive. Take it from me; very few are making much money is todays market, no matter how much they are charging. I was talking to Bill Conrad a couple of years ago and he was astounded to the prices now common; he said another friend of his had counted 100 speaker models priced over $100,000. Even if he slightly miscounted there are still a lot of mega expensive gear out there. Believe me, you would not want to be a dealer. Even at dealer price inventory is so expensive even importers limit it as much as they can; and who can blame them? Old joke: do you know how to make a small fortune in audio? Start with a large fortune.

High-end Audio is unique in that, The seller has to make no claims concerning the performance capabilities of the product he sells. All the outrageous claims are made by the buyers themselves. It's perfect.

River251: All good points and stimulation for benefiical discussion. You do wonder how so many high end audio brands all survive. I believe that many audio enthusiasts generally stay with the brands they love over the long term. When they upgrade, they are more likely to purchase the same brands in general, not all though. That's one way all of these manufacturers stay in business. It's also not easy operating a successful dealership and retail high end audio store. One innovation that has probably saved most of them is selling home theater surround sound systems and not just pure audio.

Does the $200K system sound that much better than the $3K system? While that is an extreme comparison, many $3K-$4K systems can sound damn good up close and peronal in a smaller room. The room size and contents have so much to do with the system's performance.

I recently listened to a pair of $48K Vandersteen Audio top of the line loudspeakers with a high end CD player and 300 watt mono block amps and cable/wire thicker than a garden hose!! Oh yes, I was transformed to another dimension but that's not attainable for most of us middle class busy working folks. Just for the purpose of comparison, my listening room is approx 13' x 23' x 8' high with two openings out to hallways. I've probably invested somewhere overall in the $7K area net over the past 7 years building the system one component at a time and upgrading as funds allowed. Without describing the system in detail, the brands include B&W, Rotel, NAD, Marantz, Audioquest, Tara Labs, PSAudio, etc. I absolutely love my surround sound system and will continue to upgrade and tweak it which is all part of the hobby. I use it primarily for music and DVD concerts but Blu-ray movies too of course.

So a good topic for discussion. Thanks very much.

I recently visited one of my local high-end audio dealers, a great store which has been in business since 1984.

Looking around the place as well as at him and his only salesman proved downright painful. Needless to say, they were more than gloomy about the current state of the industry. They also felt the collapse of Audiogon has kicked one of the last legs out from under the chair.