2018 exactly what is ‘High End’ audio?

High end means more expensive and exclusive compared to the rest, plain and simple.

To get people to buy it, there has to be perceived value to justify the cost. For high end audio that translates usually into some combo of bling, sound, and snake oil. YMMV.

I don't know how to discuss defining hi-end audio beyond my own (and therefore unique) personal experience.  So for "you" it's going to undoubtably be something different.  but i do know what anyone who loved their stereo system and/or even more significant- their love of music and their passion for sharing it with others really gets to the heart of things. As I met more and more people who invited me in and asked me what I thought of this or that album, it wasn't so much what they had to play it on (everyone had a different budget level and shopped different stores), it was their tremendous enthusiasm that impressed me the most.  
    Eventually I got to hear better and better stuff,  I could definitely relate to the YouTube video of 1950's Hi-Fi (thanks JMGROGAN) and remember browsing in department stores as a young kid looking at console stereo's (with built-in television sets).  When separate components came out on display in the 60's i swore i would someday get a nice stereo, too- Fisher, Scott, Marantz, WOW was i excited. One afternoon my dad and I got to hear a demo of  Voice of the Theatre speakers!  But... they didn't sound much like the real thing to my ears even though you could hear them three blocks away.
    Finally in my 30's I graduated from a Denon amp to a Hafler and then spent a "small fortune" and replaced it with a used Levinson.  
WOW all over again.  Instruments had real texture, and the notes took on a whole new dimension of liveliness. I was finally able to come up with the enormous amount of money it took, and that it was beyond my reach only a few years ago. I had felt guilty, embarrassed, even silly for wanting such esoteric gear just to listen to my CD's.  I just know how great the music sounds these days, and just accept how much I enjoy the experience.
    So nowadays if people want to know "how many watts" my speakers have, I'll tell them "100 each" and just let it go. But if they really like what they hear, I'll also add that "it's quality not quantity"....

High End, at one time, meant the components that came closest to mimicking the sound of live, UNAMPLIFIED, acoustic music heard in a defined space.
The problem is, too many people on forums do not go to live, unamplified music events, so there’s no way for them to know what is closest to the "musical truth." So they proclaim certain equipment "crap" without knowing for certain, that the setup and electrical compatibilities are not to blame.

I heard the ASL Hurricanes at Lyric HiFi in 2003. If I used that ONE audition to conclude the quality of those amps, I would have pronounced them unfit to be called 'High End.' However, I didn’t trust the audition, because the dynamic range was so bad, that after reading the TAS review, I had no doubt that that would have been a mistake to think that this is what the amps actually sounded like. And this, in a room with the IRS V speakers sitting nearby (but not hooked up for the audition). I looked over every piece of equipment in the system, and - except for the Dynaudio speakers - knew that the sound I was hearing just couldn’t POSSIBLY be the way it should sound.

So, I bought the amp, months later, elsewhere (and still unheard, except for the Lyric HiFi audition), set it up in my own system and listening room and turned it on - and was immediately dazzled by the utter realism of it. And by "immediately," I mean I pressed "play' on the remote control cd player over my shoulder,  walking back to the listening position. Didn’t even make it  to my listening chair (all of 10' away) before I whipped around, astounded, by the sonics. I was expecting, based on HP’s review, a certain "magic" to the presentation, but I got far more than I ever expected. To this day, I still have the amps. And I’ve heard higher resolution components but never anything with more "realism" than the ASLs. (I’d sure like to, but nothing I’ve heard over the years is akin to the realism they produce, although I can outlines their weaknesses easily). So, back to the point: mismatched components - and I have heard dozens of setups that I’d call 'mismatched, if only because the resulting sonic presentation was  REALLY mediocre - are all too often responsible for what people hear, rather than the component itself, at its best.  
And that is also why I only comment on what I have heard, not on the whimsical - or snarky - utterings of others who’ve never heard the component they shower such disdain upon. This is why so many others get it so wrong - and so often.
Even some inexpensive components come close to the "musical truth," if that includes tonal accuracy, musicality and dynamic range and contrast. They may not be the last word in sound staging, imaging, high frequency extension, etc, but they’re still truthful to music that was recorded in specific halls. In other words, Carnegie Hall, the hall I know best, sounds like Carnegie on recordings I know well (mostly older recordings, and BY FAR, on vinyl). But if you know live music, you know its rarely "boxy"-sounding, or the surrounding acoustics sound like it was recorded in a hall with a 20 watt bulb, and the dynamic range is...non-existent on the 1812 Overture.

Nowadays, people have hijacked the term "High End," to mean "expensive (which equipment certainly is, these days)! I don't place much faith in their opinions if they only refer to other components, never mention ANY comparison to  live music, or, AT LEAST recordings that have minimal manipulation.

+1 And if you do go to live events of acoustic music, and larger scale classical music in particular, you soon realize that what you can reproduce at home is only a postage stamp size version of it. Fortunately the brain is pretty good at compensating.
You also realize that 'sound stage', 'spatial detail', 'warmth' or 'air' are not necessarily there in live concerts in the best acoustics.

@syntax > We listen first with our eyes, then with our wallets. After taking both factors into consideration, it is then that we use our ears just to "verify" what our eyes and wallets have told us about a product.

Blindjim > how true. That do seem to be the process. Thanks.
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@Elizabeth > To invest so totally in the stereo.
As much as your car? twice you new car? As much as your HOUSE
Blindjim > I had a nice BMW 500 series in my living room at one time. A 90s version of the 500 series. the property was worth well, uh, more.

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@Mapman > High end means more expensive and exclusive compared to the rest, plain and simple.

Blindjim > sure seems quite relative and not indicative. A new preamp or DAC can run $1K to $60K or more. A PeachTree 300 runs $2K. an HT receiver costs as little as $400. Integrated amps range wildly from below a grand to near $30K in some cases.

Where then, is the bar separating High from Low?

If the answer is always to be a subjective appraisal based on first hand experiences of the goods themselves, the outcomes will be too vague for any particular distinction which would then firmly separate one from the other.
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@Willemj > what you can reproduce at home is only a postage stamp size version of it

Blindjim > stamp sized? Either take off the headphones, or move your speakers farther apart. Lol

I’ll say the recreated sound scape won’t be exact, but it can come quite close depending on the listening room dims and what was captured during the show.


@Willemj > You also realize that 'sound stage', 'spatial detail', 'warmth' or 'air' are not necessarily there in live concerts in the best acoustics.

Blindjim > not sure at all of what you’re thinking posting that last bit.

At a live event the sound stage, tenor, and dimension are in fact present. You only have to look. The players are where they are in relationship to the confines of the venue. They ain’t all standing behind each other or shoulder to shoulder in the middle of the stage. Each player and instrument occupy its own spot. If it is indeed an acoustic recital, separation gets very well defined. If everyone is in tune its usually an engaging outing.

How it is being recorded or how well, will then represent the artificial presentation your system will deliver.

The truth of the performance lives only at the performance. The recording offers merely a particular rendition or capture of it. What a home audio system does with that info thereafter should determine how proficient the home system is with being honest to the recording…. Not necessairily the actual venue’s performance.

If however the concert is all amplified its gonna gbe up to the mixing engineer and or producer to decide which product suits the recording best.

If it ain’t in the recording it sure ain’t gonna gbe in your systems ability to add something in or simply provide for it later.

This is why I’m so skeptical when reading articles on gear which relate not just the tonal attributes of a show or redcital, but where the walls are as well. Really. Were the walls stone, brick, or drywall? Better yet, was everyone wearing socks, or not? Were the chairs metal or wood? Cushioned?


Memories are not the exact pictorial evidence one should rely upon when recounting what is being displayed audibly. A mind can tent to bend or add vague artifacts into the writers memory and consequent testimony.
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I sure didn’t realize how difficult a question this was before now.

Applying a price range likely won’t simplify matters. Albeit as price increases the opportunity to experience the magic that exceptional audio’   electronics deliver becomes more commonplace even though the pieces responsible for recreating an engaging presentation often, are not at all common.

Maybe defining High end audio is best done from the top down than aiming directly at every piece of electronics hitting today’s market.

‘Cost No Object’, there should be little or no space for debate here on the it is or it is not.

C.N.O. items are easy to spot. They always have a comma in their prices and usually 2 or 3 digits forward of it.

Likewise, ‘Statement’ and ‘Signature’ lines of equipment should fit into the ‘high end’ enclave with few, if any, detractors. Once more these are readily observed as the tax per device regularly has five digits and the first number is a 3, 4, or higher.

Speakers are the most mystifying IMHO. Checking each models MSRP does very little to separate great performers from incredibgle reproducers. The moving tartget of speaker performance rests on more than the speaker system du jour. What is pushing them, and their resident prison. I’ll cast a vote for any pair exceeding the $9K plateau.

Regarding wires and accessories? Hoo boy! Here’s possibly the biggest bag of worms and most heated, controversial topic in audio. I’m not entering any vote there.

Across these considered areas, everything is open to deliberation. Add in the resplendent factor of complete synergy in arranging separates en masse, which can be much like hearding cats now and then, and the quandary of where does “high end audio’ begin or stop garners still greater mystery.