What improvements did you hear in going from entry level to high end Audio?

Amongst others, dynamics are important to me, and the upgrades I have bought over the years are getting me closer to life performances. As we all know, it is never difficult to tell the difference between life and reproduced sound, so my objective is to get as close as possible to the life sound of (acoustical) instruments. 

teo_audio makes it sound as if all old audio gear is S...T.  It isn't despite using magnetic attracted, cheap parts, wiring, casework, etc.  Some great sounding old equipment may not be the highest high end, but damn, they can be ultra musical.  What I'm after is the music, not sounds/resolution.  My video equipment uses Yamaha CR620 receivers for audio.  I find that it lacks a lot of my high resolution audio systems but they are plenty musical for listening to my audio from my Sony 940d 75" tvs.   

I've heard so many $100K to nearly $1 million audio systems that just sound like crap or I want to run away from (I'm talking in the 75 to 100 systems over the years).  Maybe the equipment is good, but it was not put together correctly.  Or, despite the superior quality of the parts, the design sucks. 

I really have felt assaulted by more high end systems than old fashioned Marantz, McIntosh, Fisher, Sansui, Yamaha... based systems from the 1960s.  When they power more modern speakers of today, they acquit themselves quite nicely.  Sure, my Yamaha receivers are hooked up using high end, moderate cost cabling and have SR duplexes, fuses, Omega E-Mats to bring out the max performance.  But they are still, not high end equipment that still sounds great for mid-fi.

You still have to know ow to match I went to 2 shows back to back.  Magico a1 where great at axpona and terrible at lone star Audio fest. Different equipment and cabling made the difference

Different room may have made the biggest difference. A few month ago I have moved house, having lived in the previous house for nearly 10 years, had tweaked that room during those 10 years, now into another house, have to start from scrap, same equipment, same everything, but sounds like crap at this moment. Not an easy task lies ahead to get the sound I was used too...lot's of thinking, reading, trials to come. But that's also an interesting challenge, if it were that easy than not the same satisfaction.