Risking redundancy, I’ll say my point (shared by some) is that more money does not necessarily get you into "serious" sound quality, or I what I assume onhwy61 means is "higher" sound quality, just more expensive high quality if set up properly. I, of course, have no idea exactly what other people’s ears are hearing, but often I disagree with what others think is good sound especially in high end stores where somebody is trying to make a case that what they’re selling is great. I recently mixed a Julian Lage concert in a 350 or so seat concert venue (Scott Colley and Kenny Wolleson bass and drums) where I miked Julian’s 2 ancient and dissimilar tube amps and that’s it. Talk back mic…off when they were playing…I did have mikes on everything else (looks more professional and hey…I get slightly overpaid for this stuff) but at the band’s suggestion left ’em off. That’s the kind of sound that influences my home rig taste, and my home rig sounds nothing like that show. Was it high quality? NO CLUE…it was simply great sound. To me…and the stunned crowd. I’ve made a clean high (supposedly) resolution recording of myself playing a great acoustic guitar with a great mic, and played it on my personally tweaked listening (as opposed to my recording) rig, and then played the same thing on the same guitar live as a demonstration for some friends (you can’t really hear what others hear while you’re playing the damn thing yourself)…the results were interesting, and that sort of thing can show you realities of reproduced sound that maybe some people (audiophiles mostly) are possibly better off not knowing.
