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

Huh? But nobody is saying all expensive audiophile products are great. In the case of Audioquest and many other audio companies, their products have a range of prices, as someone noted, including the $uper Expensive audiophile products - which is actually the subject of this thread, I.e., is anybody DISAPPOINTED WITH A MOVE TO THE SUPER EXPENSIVE HIGH END?

Obviously, as least to most dedicated audiophiles, there is a whole lot more to the hobby besides buying a bunch of expensive stuff and plugging it into the wall.

Most likely the new Audioquest Hurricane power cord at almost $2K for 2m Cord would qualify as $uper High End just based on cost.

“A rich audiophile has about as much chance of entering Audio Nirvana as a camel 🐪 has of passing through the eye 👁 of a needle.”- Old audiophile axiom

When you read this discussion well, you should have read that trial and error is the most important part what limits most people. Trial and error is pure audiogamblind based on facts.

I had many duscussions about this with people who also work in audio. And they all admit that it is not that precise. Only when you have not the insight and knowledge to look further you will go on to do audio this way.

You only can use Audioquest cables and the same counts for other brands maximum when you understand the properties and what it does in an audio system.

Cables are tested just by audiogambling. And you can hear that the endresult changed. But this is extreemly ineffective. Because you still don’t know why your stage and sound is what you hear.

This means you drive a boat but you have no idea how to guide it to the place you want to go. People have no idea how limit the part is of the whole quality a cable could create if you would use the full potential.

My clients buy cables at the importancy level of a component. This means I creatre shootouts for them that I can create a bigger step with a cable compared to change to a different component.

Most people overhere cannot even imagine this. This proofs that trial and error give totaaly different endresults compared to creating audio by Tru-Fi.

Perfectionists always want their clients to get the best value for the money they want to spend. And you can only spend the amount one time.

So we create ideas what will give them the biggest step. I love to outperfrom audioshops. Each selling option for me is like a game. And I only want to win.

Tru-Fi is superior in effectness compared to any silly kind of trial and error. For me it is so easy to outperfrom other shops over and over again. What they can offer for me it is so easy to overrule it.

Even with cables I proved to outperform component options of competitors. Audio for me will always be a battle against children.

Children have less knowledge and experience of many situations they don’t have experienced yet. Trial and error also does not give you the information to understand it what you are doing.

When I am at an audioshow I always start to count the faults they made. And mannn the lists are long. Thousands of tests in almost 20 years gave me superior insight and knowledge to understand both sound&vision.

I can see and hear that they only can see to a very limit level in details. Because they have no idea what they do wrong. They never went sofar into details.

From 2005 till 2007 I visited about 70 people with systems between 10.000 euro and over 200.000 euro.

I was amazed that most of these 70 systems sounded rather poor regardless of price. It proved that the way they created these systems by trial and error was not that succesful.

The list of faults they made is so big that it is difficult to create a stunning system. Most of them are in a circle and trail and error will never get them out of this circle.

They change one part for another one and hope it will be the solution. They have no idea that what they do is gambling. And that this is the reason why they are not able to make the step they would like to see.

In the last 2 years I met different new clients with expensive systems all far over 50.000 dollar. I said: I only can help you when we sell everything.

Based on the fact that all their parts could be easily replaced by better ones. Even for the money these systems were sold for. It was easy to create a superior level in sound and stage quality. In most situations I even don’t use all the money of the sold products.

It proofs how much more effective Tru-Fi is over trial and error created audio systems.

The sad fact is that, as our disposable income generally increases as we get older,  the most important transducers - our ears - continue to deteriorate and no amount of money spent on  "high-end" equipment, is going to fix this problem.

I disagree. The real problem for audiophiles is that there are so many problems in playback, especially for digtital, and that many of the problems are either unknown or not well documented. Therefore, the motivated audiophile is forced to try to research what those problems are on line or to undertake the investigation himself. What kind of problems am I referring to? Well, without going too crazy, let’s start with background scattered laser light in CD players. Also, the vibration of the CD transport compartment itself, let alone seismic vibration, which of course is another big issue. These problems are not secret, for crying out loud. Well, some of them are but I will avoid those. What else? OK, the induced magnetic field from large transformers. And the vibration of large transformers, you know, the vibration that is direct coupled to the chassis and all th circuit boards by the four bolts holding down the transformer. And wire directionality, including fuses, power cords, all wire. See, I didn’t mention anything too crazy. 🤪

So, it’s not strictly a trial and error issue. Although that can be part of it. For example, I’ve always said trial and error for speaker placement is the wrong approach. Audio is like a big excavation, trying to retrieve the missing information, the information that is there on the recording but not in the room during playback.