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

I totally agree with Pokey 77 and bmontani.
Through the years i haved been climbing up the ladder. Had some nice equipment that i traded in, with some cash added and got a even better equipment/sound. Always tried to find the weak spot in the chain and the best gear for the money awailebel.
About 20 years ago the cabels became real components and the level raised substancial, then the decoupling and all the room treatments etcappeared. The tweaks have raised the bar so high that i often think its much better in my musicroom, than real concerts (not acoustical ones).
In the beginning i was analysing the soundstage but at a point it became much more emotional and here is is were the ultra highend stuff really makes sence to me. 
I can also lisen to a low level system but at a very low volume and not for so long time. In order to get a ultra highend system where you have a concert in front of you, there are so many things( in fact everything) you need to adress.
 Its my expirience that you never get a superb sound at a show because there are so many thing you cannot control. It takes years of hard work to reach a ultra high level and today i would say the tweaks is 50% of the result. The rest is split between the music material and the hardware.
Beleave your ears and emotions or ask your wife.
I have never regreat using a huge sum on my audio/music life but i almost only buy used gear as my budget is limited. If a component dosent perform well, try another. Nice designd and handmade gear can always sold again.
Worst deal ever: was a pair of Halcro DM 68 amps, they arent making music in my ears. I tried them and sold them quickly again but they thought me a lot about musical feeling. 
Best deal are the 2LP 45RPM's from the late 50's. 
Biggest problem, is the lack of posibillityes to try equipment before buying it. Dealers are worth giving a higher price if they give a proper service. 

Happy lisining.

I've heard a couple of so called super high end systems and I didn't like most of them. The biggest sin was bloated soundstage,  bloated images, singers 3m (10 ft) high and so on. No sense of realism at all. I liked MBL systems. I have a modest system and enjoy it better then most of the super systems. 

I don’t want to hijack this thread, but I have a question about what type of music folks listen to on their high end systems. Here is the basis of that question: with just a few limited exceptions, rock music is already amplified through electronics and speakers even when you hear it live. So what is the goal with audiophile gear if rock music is your primary choice for music? I mean, is it to reproduce the electronics at the venue? The electronics in the studio?

This all makes more sense to me when one is a fan of classical, jazz, acoustic, other forms of music where striving for realistic electronic reproduction at least has a theoretically reachable objective of reproducing the sound of a live non-electronic instrument.

I listen to enough jazz and other forms of music where there is an acoustic or at least not re-reproduced and re-amplified element that choosing and upgrading gear has some relevance to trying to reproduce the sound of an instrument.

But I still mostly listen to rock, and for me, with rock music, the objective is detail, combined either with a sweet or pretty sound or a powerful, slam sound, depending on the type of rock. I want it to move me emotionally, and the choice of what direction it should move me depends on the mix of mood and choice of rock music style.

The point is, yes, I get that whatever sounds good to someone is valid because there is no objective standard here whatsoever. But I would posit that diminishing marginal returns probably hit much lower in price point if rock is your music of choice, or at least you are chasing after tiny little tweaks, relative to types of music where reproducing the sound of an instrument, rather than reproducing the sound of an electronic pickup and a Marshall stack, is the goal.

@jji666 - fair point, and the conventional wisdom is that speakers and audio systems in general should be genre agnostic...
The presentation will be enhanced by a better system in my estimation. I use horns in my main system and though those aren’t necessarily more expensive than dynamic speakers, they do a marvelous job in dynamic swings- (the so-called "jump" factor). I play rock on my vintage Quad ESLs too, and they give a different perspective without the dynamics, sheer volume or scale (though as a smaller portrait in miniature they can sound fabulous with well recorded rock).
We attended the King Crimson show in Austin a few nights ago, and it was fun to take in the latest live recording on LP- the Toronto 2016 recordings for a morning after "hair of the dog." No way could I reproduce the sheer volume and sock of all three drum kits and the depth of some of the synth and bass guitar sounds with all of the power of a 2900 seat auditorium in my comparatively smaller listening room, but it sounded pretty good. (It’s a good live recording too).
All the criteria used to differentiate sound quality applies, at least to my ears- yes, I use real instruments as a reference and want to evaluate a system hearing a grand piano-- often a very difficult instrument to record and reproduce faithfully--but much of what I listen to--early post psych/pre-prog folk and hard rock sounds wonderful on system capable of high quality reproduction.
The fault often isn’t even the amplified v. acoustic instruments; to me, the shortcomings in a lot of popular music have to do with the quality of the recording. The era I’m fond of-- late ’60s, very early ’70s- was typically fewer tracks, often less outboard processing and in many cases, less overdubbing. (Not to say that the studio concoctions in the ’70s sound bad when the engineer because auteur rather than just recordist, but the risk is greater when the studio wizardry falls flat). The bands also didn’t have the crutch of being able to punch in a better take- they could and often did play through the whole song in a take and that can sound better than some Franken-recording sewn together from parts. You can hear the room, the position of the instruments and get a better sense of the stage if recorded that way (and not manipulated to hell and back in mixing and other post-production "magic.")
And, without the ability to do 100 takes and stitch together a "perfect" recording from multiple takes and overdubs, the natural acoustic, such that it is, along with bleed through, gives a coherence to the sound that is equally telling.
The other reality for me is that I’m not listening to audiophile recordings. Some just aren’t great sounding. And there, no matter how good or bad the system, it isn’t going to WOW you with sonics- the goosebumps come from the composition and performance.
The question -- I guess it should be rhetorical-- is how much one limits their listening by the sonic quality of the recordings. I can’t live on a diet of audiophile warhorses, and like all kinds of stuff, from pop to proto-metal to hard psych as well as some of the more adventurous material that defies genre.

Great Thread...I really enjoy reading this forum weekly...Thanks!