Some excellent points by all above. For me it's a lack of perspective. We spend so much time debating esoteric issues that we lose sight of what is really important to the average music enthusiast. All over the world people love music, yet only a very small minority of listeners become audiophiles. Most people don't want to spend tens of thousands of dollars on equipment, nor really deal with all the "synergy" type problems of system matching. As an industry audio manufacturers need to focus in on bettering the quality of sub $2,500 systems that are truly plug in and play. I've always argued that for $7,500 MRSP, that someone could put together a system that that reaches 85% of the state of the art. There's no reason why for $2,500 someone shouldn't be able to attain 70% of the same.
