Are audiophile products designed to initially impress then fatigue to make you upgrade?

I love the JBL/Lansing Paragons I see on youtube, stunning. It's said Frank Sinatra used 3 of them (L-C-R) channels in the studio.

. There are rumours that Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin acquired three Paragons each – one for each of left, center and right channels – with which they used to monitor their recordings from master tapes.^[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBL_Paragon

Here is Frank at home and how many channels does he use? Even Frank gets it, two speakers can't get it done, sorry😢

Floyd Toole’s home system, he is also an immersive audio adopter. If you see my virtual system he uses the same setup I do:

https://www.thescreeningroomav.com/single-post/2019/03/06/The-Ultimate-Real-World-Home-Theater-and-Listening-Room

@kota1 why would you need a center channel for most music recordings? My apogee duetta 2 speakers have no problem with center imaging when the recording has it, it would ruin the imaging with a center channel with most recordings.

@kota1 thats a cool photo of Sinatra’s system at his Palm Springs home (not the really unique Twin Palms, but instead his later home built at Tamarisk CC). The preamp is a Mcintosh C22, which is stereo. The center is summed in such a setup.

Glad you like your immersive/surround sound setup. Many of us have consciously shied away from such a setup. To do it right it can get pretty pricey if using good gear and then it is still digitized/remixed from typically (there are a few exceptions) 2 channel masters.