Moderately priced audio

+1 on the Rogue. I’ve recently heard it and it’s a pretty sweet and good sounding amp.

I did not do extensive listening tests with it, but I think I could be quite happy listening to it for a long time.  I heard it with some moderate sized Klipsch, probably the Fortes.

I have loved music since I was a kid many years ago and I developed an interest as a teen in the science of improving the sound.  I remember being thrilled when I found the first stereo console in a Sears store with separate bass and treble controls.  I had never heard a bass note thump.  When in college about 1965, I walked into a hifi salon and in the sound room they were playing Sinatra at the Sands.  I was stopped in my tracks.  I had never heard such realism, Sinatra was right in the room and I could even hear the tinkle of glasses at the tables. The amp was probably a 30wpc tube model and the speakers were JBL Lancer 44s. I've had better systems, but none impressed me as much as that first experience. There is definitely diminished returns as the price goes up.

@schmitty1 - think about this.  If you pop open any one of your components and see what is inside you will see that the moderately priced gear is not much different than the higher priced gear.  You can do many things yourself to upgrade a component.  Do you see $100K amps with caddock, shinkoh, V-Caps inside, or a top of the line volume control, well no.  Just those changes will probably get you 70-80% of the sound of the higher priced manufactured components.  Once you try this, you will kick yourself for not learning how to do these upgrades.

You do not need to buy really expensive components, just start lerning to upgrade your own componetns.  Many people had made pretty good money for doing upgrades for other.

Happy Listening.

Reading many posts on Audiogon, you would think that people are embarrassed to admit they have a hard time affording anything over, let's say, $2000. Numbers discussed and thrown around are in tens of thousands for speakers and thousands for phono cartridges and cables.

However, a couple of years ago, price of an average audio system owned by a Stereophile reader was around $12 000, if I remember correctly. There was even a number how much an average reader was planning to spend on their system in the next year. It was relatively low. I forgot the number but way lower than $5000. It is somewhere on the Internet. Maybe $1500? I am not really sure anymore.

There is some discrepancy between what we read and what we do, it seems. Maybe magazines need to "review" more expensive products because those products do need more advertising. Cheaper products may be selling themselves just based on price and manufacturers do not allocate so much into their marketing/reviews. See how much noise there is about new Magnepan speakers. They are $650, if I remember correctly.

Car magazines are full of tests of expensive cars while Toyota Corolla still sells well.