hi End

The Monitor series is upper MidFi to perhaps - perhaps - lower end HiFi. But, imo, that is stretching it. Not remotely close to the high end. 

Psyops
All the older gear from McIntosh, SAE, Bose, AR, Yamaha, Marantz, JBL, Garrard, Sansui, and many other brands were considered hi-end at the time, many still are today. 

>>>>>That’s a pretty mixed bag of stuff. I would tend to disagree they were ever high end, especially not today.

Here ya go!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-end_audio

What he said hind end!

douglas_schroeder

What do you consider hi-end?  I have a very moderately priced system (Rega Planar 6, Innuos ZenMini, Chord Qutest DAC, Audio Hungary APR203 preamp, First Watt F7 and Rethm Saadhana) that sounds as good (to me) as much higher priced systems.  I would have to spend 10x my current investment to achieve significant increase in SQ.  I think its SQ that makes a system HiFi.