Why Don't More People Love Audio?

Clearly there must be many in this category - during a recent visit to the one local audio shop worth visiting, they told me they had pre-sold about 10 of the upcoming Krell DVD players at $9K retail. They reiterated several times that they can't the new HTS2 fast enough to meet demand. They told me they were negotiating to sell their floor model Dynaudio Evidence's ($85K/pair) to a guy who is in the process of building a new listening room that measures 45x70 feet! Then he pointed out that this same guy was lending, since the room isn't ready yet, his Krell KPS-25sc and his $25K/pair speaker cables to the shop. He went on to say that the guy was thinking about doing HT by adding another pair of Evidences. Somewhere in that sequence I'm thinking, "this has nothing to do with loving music and everything to do with status"

My overriding impression of going into almost every high-end shop in my area is that it's this category that keeps them going, and several of them are doing VERY well. Anecdotally, it seems that the shops that are small and built a business by growing an evolving client base are getting hammered by the internet, etc., but that the places that move a lot of boxes to people who want something good and modern without the hassle of learning about high-end audio (or video for that matter) are doing very well. -Kirk

I think the ultra high end does market itself pretty well and attracts buyers into the yuppie market place. Fortunately, like us music lovers / audiophiles, even yuppies can hear the bad sound made by many of the exclusive products. Even if they can't hear it when they are told that cables and interconnect should cost about as much as a component the run for the door. People with lots of money aren't freekin stupid - the exclusive high end for stupid wannabees.

Because they just don't realize just how good it is!!! Lack of exposer.

Because you don't need anything better than a ghetto blaster for the crap which is playin out there. MP 3 is a good example. Listen to an MP3 file over a high end system and you know what I mean.
Good music - as an art - is elite stuff....so is high end gear.
Aida_w

I'm a recent convert to the high end. I think my conversion began the day I listened to and purchased a pair of Sennheiser HD600 headphones. For a few hundred dollars I owned audio gear that could be considered among the best in its class and far outperformed the speaker systems I'd heard in BestBuy and the like.

That purchase led me to websites like this one, where I learned about the many choices, cliques and nuances of audio gear. Granted, I am playing on a smaller scale, but I've just ordered my first SS headphone amp, and am looking into interconnects and powercables. In the future I'd like to experiment with an OTL headphone amp, and in my research I've become more interested in tubes.

Recently, I've seen Sennheiser advertisements in men's magazines. Perhaps readers will become interested and follow a path similar to the one I've found.