Has anyone made the jump to $uper High end and were disappointed?

I used to work in a recording studio, and I'll say that for the most part, yes the really high-end gear does make a difference, and most of the time that difference can be heard in blind, controlled A/B/X tests.

However---this comes with a huge caveat. In the studio context (at least in my experience), at least as much money went into designing and building the room as anything else. Non-parallel walls, bass traps, low reverberation, super-quiet air conditioning, etc. After that, as other people have said, speakers are probably where you hear the dollars most easily (and, in the studio context, microphones).

Second big caveat---although I said we could often hear differences in A/B/X tests, these differences were often *really* small and subtle, and frankly not anything I would ever pay for in a home situation. I think you hit the point of diminishing returns fairly early, actually, and while you can go on and pay 20x as much money for another 1% improvement (and the 1% is real), is it worth it? In the end it's up to you, of course.

To follow up on the last two posts. My recent upgrades have been cheap and made a real difference. The first was when I had moved from my Quad els57 speakers to the less efficient 2805’s and in a rather larger room, and my old 2x45 watt Quad sounded strained at higher levels. So I replaced it with a completely refurbished 2x140 watt Quad 606-2 bought for about 350 dollars. At low levels there was no difference, but at higher levels the sound was obviously cleaner and less strained. The second upgrade was when I was disappointed with my new B&W PV1d subwoofer: it sounded woolly and did not integrate well with the electrostats. So I added a cheap DSPeaker Antimode 8033 room eq unit, and the woolly slow bass suddenly became tight and clean, and perfectly integrated. Finally, last week, I decided the Harbeth P3ESR speakers of my desktop system in the study were suffering from too much bass boost from the desk. I measured them with REW, created an equalization file, and downloaded that into the Equalizer APO/Peace software in the desktop computer that I use as a source in the study (it is on anyway so I have no need for anything else as a source - rest of the system: ODAC usb dac, Emotiva Control Freak volume control and a refurbished 2x100 watt Quad 405-2 power amplifier). Here, the only outlay for obviously cleaner sound was some time spent, and the result was far greater than I could have achieved with better electronics, let alone cables.

You have to know who you are.   If you drive a Honda - perfectly great car, but then buy a Porsche,....you have to provide additional money for maintenance, additional care in parking (setup), etc.  If you are willing to provide the additions, appreciate the added performance and not care about the additional efforts.....then it will  be worth it.  If you want music in your home and not care if the second violins are using spiccato bowings or pizzicato, then don't look for zebras when horses are roaming wild in Arizona.  ...find your own happiness.

However, the argument here is whether these high priced units are actually Porsches or just Honda’s in fancy dress, or even Lada’s for that matter. To be precise, the latter is actually my view on a lot of audiophile gear (esp. vinyl or tubes).

Back when I was younger, I thought McIntosh was the pinnacle of audio. I only read Stereo Review then and was quite happy with my Pioneer-Teac-Akai system. Now, with the web and reading other various publications, McIntosh just seems to be in the middle, abeit still expensive to most.