Years ago when I first went high end. I had three ARC pieces (SP-3, Dual 51, and Dual 75A, a Linn LP12, and a Charlie the Tuner. The sat on their own feet on wooden cabinet shelves and were plugged into a power strip and into the wall. Ics were cheap and the speaker wire was heavy gauge lighting wire. There were perhaps six other guys in town with pretty comparable systems in a town of about 50k and three dealers. Many people had speakers and a receiver and the local dealers sold them. I see many of these systems still in use by friends of my age. Most of these friends don't have home theater systems or even big HD tvs. They are the old amusement style families. I still maintain that in part it is other amusements, but also is the expense of vibration isolation, electrical power, and high quality wires. This is not to say that our sound today isn't far better than long ago, but all that stuff has to be bought and is hard to hide and has low WAF.
If you took away HD large screens, BlueRay, Iphones, Ipads, MP3 noise, etc., you would end up with bored people not more receptive to quality audio.
If you took away HD large screens, BlueRay, Iphones, Ipads, MP3 noise, etc., you would end up with bored people not more receptive to quality audio.