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

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.

Don't you think that the really High End will do OK in a recession? The super rich are always with us and in fact, are growing exponentially. It's us wage slaves in the middle, that are suffering. So it's the sellers of $2 to 4000 that are feeling the pinch.

If you look at the far east, the growth of millionaires and billionairs, is phenomenal. If you ask the high end manufacturers where they are looking for sales, that's where it is. I have mentioned this before, but I heard of A US speaker manufacturer who makes a £1000,000+ set of speakers as advertising, promotion, never expecting to sell any. He went to a Shanghai show, a guy came in, listened for a good while and bought 2 pairs there and then.

Thank you all for the very enlightening discussion.

David12, as to this super rich always being with us, I wonder if startups thinking of taking the risky plunge go for the very high end, thinking it less risky than swimming with the masses, for that very reason. If you are a good promoter and get a hundred customers lined up in that price range maybe that spells survival. Maybe that's why there are so many ultra-expensive components these days.

For what it's worth, vintage audio prices are climbing again (been checking them for my gear). I think the economy is on its way back. And the advent of $1000 iPhone DACs would seem to bode well :-).