AUDIO PRICE INSANITY PRICE VS. PERFORMANCE WORTH IT?

When you find the pure sound, mostly on retro systems, you can sit back and enjoy the sweet tone which flows through every room even at low volume.
I recently took my 4 way speakers off and replaced with a pair of AR8's..ZAR900 for a pair of qsc/t drivers with an inch of smooth paper on the outer gave amazing mid range, the tweeters are so sweet,,not overpowering...running a HK5000, RDP980 AND RDD980.
The complete system cost less than USD1000.

Everything completely reworked by yours truly.
Took a few days, complete re-solder and clean up.
I have had many nad systems, they are also pure and one never gets tired of listening.
Guess i am content now!

Set-up. An expertly set up $30K system will trounce a megabuck system set up by an airhead. 

That said, the best parts cost money. By that I mean parts that are better in ways known to physics, not hyper-relativistic black hole refractory spirals (apologies if someone has already trademarked this - I sin in ignorance).

You simply can't fake nude Vishay resistors or vacuum capacitors or air bearings. Once you've heard them, there is no going back - and it doesn't matter how much can be spent on overhyped gear du jour, which uses such parts sparingly, if at all. And won't be set up correctly anyway.

If you look at my components and speakers most of them are not big name brands. They are KR Audio. Gato Audio. Resonessence Labs. These are my major components and they are not huge Audio names but they are quality.  Gato Audio and gamut have some of the same designers in the past. The gato has great drivers tweeters and crossovers with quality parts and tons of research done. The KR audio va900  is a tube amp with a solid state pre and tube power and the companies own tubes.  The Resonessence people are owned by the creator of the ess Sabre chip.  I chose these for a reason not just hype. That’s important.  No one will have my system. It’s very niche and sounds great. 

One last thing! I have noticed a lot of the big names comoanies are owned now by venture capitalist who are only profit motivated. Not audio motivated. That’s another reason why some of these outrageous prices happen