One reason very wealthy people rarely have a high-end system may be that they aren’t as passionate about music as are we. I got my first better-than-normal system because I heard music played through the one of a friend, and it radically improved the most important thing in my life---music. How many people these days care about music the way we do? I never saw any of the characters on Seinfeld (or any other TV show---the barometer of where our culture is) listening to music. Normal people (my sisters, for instance) think nothing of spending a coupla grand on a large screen, but that much on a "stereo"? Whatta ya, nuts?!
But that doesn’t explain why musicians generally have terrible---and I mean absolute garbage---systems, if they have one at all. One exception is, surprisingly (to me, at least), Henry Rollins (Black Flag, etc). He has a nice little system ;-) he bought from Brian Berdan at Audio Elements in Pasadena: a pair of Wilson Alexandria XLF, VTL Siegfried electronics, SME table with Graham arm and Lyra pickup (I believe), Cardas cables, etc., installed in an acoustically treated room. Not bad for a punk!
