No the so called by you " mystery" of high end audio is relatively easy to decipher...
Buy books on sound and acoustic and go on read the valuable indications on many forums and articles about acoustics ...I summarized it all with my three working dimensions embeddings controls basic concept ...
If i could do it for myself with a budget system any body can do it if he dare to STUDY AND EXPERIMENT ...And low cost system or high end high cost one dont change the necessary embeddings controls tasks in mechanical, electrical and acoustical working dimensions of the system synergy ...
Then Audio high end is not a mystery but a set of questions and answers and experiments...
Sound and music are the science mystery not high end audio, which is only a set of engineering tasks and a set of experiments to do for the audiophiles...
... Audio high end is a"mystery" for passive consumers buying gear as upgrades in a frustrating series of stopgap and obsessive race in their journey ...Many collected 40 amplifiers or as many speakers without learning how to embed them EVEN ONE satisfactorily enough to forgot obsession about sound and focus on music ...
Studies protected me of this dead end obsession, and indicate me what to do , nevermind the gear price, to reach a minimal optimum of S. Q. with the gear i could afford and accordingly to his design quality level... And trust me even with a relatively low cost system as mine it is good enough to forget higher costlier products temptation and frustrations ...
Creativity and acoustics rules audio...No mysteries here ...
The mystery of high end audio is way more mysterious than that of music. When someone figures out how high end audio really works let me know. It’s hard to make any sense out of a lot that is written about it. We’re talking Twilight Zone here on many cases folks. Where normal things don’t happen very often…. Cue Rod Serling