High Performance Audio - The End?

Thanks well made observations...

Music is not sound.....Music is a whole not a sum of details....

Microscope resolve, musical instrument reveal...Resolving power must always be at the service of the revealing power...

Sound cause harm, music and silence heal.....

Most hobbyists will not be in the  class of systems to enable all genres and recordings to sound wonderful.  No judgment of anyone's efforts,  just experience with gear from budget to close to SOTA. 

Most hobbyists will not be in the class of systems to enable all genres and recordings to sound wonderful. No judgment of anyone’s efforts, just experience with gear from budget to close to SOTA.

You seems to be serious?

I had an audio system that cost me 500 dollars including dac, amp, and speakers, and it is the best sound i ever listen to.... Why because it is not the price of the gear that impact most but the way it is embed in electrical, mechanical, and acoustical dimension...All genre sound marvellous here even metal or acoustic....

And beside that one of the best amplifier in the world in 1978 does not becomes automatically scrap today...

If your job is selling gear it is ok, but it is a bit snobbery to allegue price to be judge of the way a system sound without being even conscious of the acoustic extraordinary impact.... I dont even mention mechanical and electrical embedding, i doubt you even know what it is....

Sorry to be rude....Awake to reality ans spend less on electronics.. Spend more on thinking... :)

Audiophile experience is not reserved to 100, 000 dollars system....
mine is so good upgrading seems ridiculous....There is better yes, but by a small margin at very, very, high price...

Embeddings: the multiple ways a piece of electronic components is connected and immersed in system gear, house, and room....

To your discharge most audio system dont sound at all with their potential S.Q. it is true... Because like you, most people ignore the method to embed their gear....They think that all is ok ready out of the box....And manufacturer dont have interest to enlighten them when they pay for the "best" and dont want, in addition to paying big money, any hard work to reach the high level their gear is able to reach....ANY gear need to be embed never mind the price.....

My best to you....

The fact of the matter is that the bulk of audiophiles' systems are not that good. Contemporary music sounds bad on these systems because they simply cannot handle it, while superior systems can. It's foolish to blame the genre of music when the system is poor. If you're running a $5-10K rig, then do not expect such music to sound great. Conversely, anyone can delude themselves into thinking their system is all that when it sounds good playing simpler, less challenging music. The fact is that if the modern music sounds poor on your system, then it's not that great of a system, and/or you didn't set it up well.
If this were true then why at audio shows do I not here a wide variety of music, usually the same Audiophile recordings. I know your going to say it's the room.

**** Can your Audio System be too Transparent? ****

Of course... IF the goal is to maximize enjoyment only according to what pleases our own personal ideas about what constitutes enjoyment and not to extract as much of the music as possible, which may be the ultimate and most enjoyable goal for someone else.

The reason is simple. With any diminution of system “transparency” there will be a diminution of musical information. Inescapable. This is why a truly great recording will sound fantastic on a mostly transparent (none are entirely transparent) system and won’t sound as good if that system is made less transparent. A crappy recording can be made to sound less crappy by reducing the system’s level of transparency; but, at what cost?

One of the problems is that we focus almost entirely on frequency response related issues which are what determine musical characteristics such as timbre and ignore the relationship between timbre and rhythm, a component of music which is arguably even more musically important; and, the nuances of which are usually almost entirely ignored. If we aim to make our systems less transparent (enjoyable?) with the focus only being timbre or other frequency response related issues we will invariably diminish (distort) rhythmic nuance and impact.

Personally, I don’t buy the “certain gear for certain music” approach. Only a system that can reproduce the impact of a great Rock band can, in my experience, do justice to a recording of a great symphony orchestra going full tilt playing Stravinsky. Of course, pragmatism dictates that we aim for some sort of balance between ultimate transparency and the realities of the quality of most recorded music.