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??? What Is The MOST Expensive System You Ever Heard ??? What Was Your Opinion ???

So yesterday I stopped by the dealer who sold me my Harbeth speakers..I was invited into the "BIG System" room where he had finally got everything set up & dialed in on the nearly 1 MILLION $ MBL system(price after tax,delivery & set up)..
Everything,& I mean EVERYTHING,from the thick cables,to the amps & pre to the turntable to the 6’ tall speakers was FREAKING HUGE!
As I settled into the sweet spot he dropped the needle on a freshly wet cleaned & vacuumed heavy pressing of "Kind of Blue" the VERY first sound that greeted me was a horrible THUMP as the needle hit the groove!
I spent the next 10 minutes or so listening intently..Never in my life did I imagine imaging & staging like those big MBL Omni directional speakers threw out!Every single inch of that room where the recording was made was laid out in micro detail,you could hear feet shuffling around & tell as horns were swung up & down or side to side..As far as those aspects of the demo were concerned it was very impressive..However I didn’t hear that anything unique about the natural warmth & "more"organic tone always spewed about vinyl,plus the tics & pops from the record were pretty annoying & thinking about what I heard as I made the nearly 2 hour drive home I didn’t recall ever having that melt into the presentation feeling of relaxation I value when listening to music..On the contrary,I did recall a constant barrage of individual aspects of the performance that were highly noticeable but IMO there was never a unification of what I heard & sometimes the performance came off as a little mechanical & hard...
When I got home & settled in,I qued up the SACD copy of the same album on my Elite multi disc player..The imaging & staging of my meager little system shouldn’t even be called imaging & staging compared to that MBL system..Micro detail was pretty much non existent when compared as well..But the music was relaxing,it didn’t beg to be dissected & analyzed,only enjoyed..Oh & 1 VERY important difference was that while the tape hiss of the original recording was clearly present & evident,there was absolutely no THUMP when the song started & ZERO pops or tics from that needle following roughly cut grooves in vinyl!
All in all,the experience makes me appreciate what I have even more..

freediver
jimmyblues1959
155 posts
 

The most expensive system I can remember hearing was a Naim Audio based system that in today’s inflation adjusted dollars would be worth somewhere in the area of $150,000.

I’ve always thought it ironic that most of the audio enthusiasts who can afford the most expensive gear tend to be older people whose hearing is not as acute as it was when they were younger. As such I have wondered about the wisdom, strictly from a common sense standpoint, of investing such a princely sum of money on a state of the art audio system, when the final component in the audio chain (namely one’s own ears) is not equal to the rest of the system.

Of course this is just my subjective opinion and should be taken with a grain of salt.

evillgeniuz
4 posts
 

1.6M system. 

overthemoon
425 posts
 

I’ve been able to hear many ‘high end systems’. In my experience there is a correlation between price and sound at a macro-level that can make the difference in the experience from interesting to awe inspiring. 
 

Electronics have their own characteristics (e.g., Audio Research, CH Precision, Jeff Rowland,et.), as do speakers (Wilson, Stenheim, Focal, etc.) and overall system set up including use of subs. 
 

The most impressive to me was CH Precision and Stenheim. In the end, it’s personal preference and I have had awesome experiences listening to systems designed differently than mine. 

livinon2wheels
88 posts
 

I have no clue what the most expensive system was, since I have been listening to equipment since I was a child and I am now 72. That covers a lot of ground. Maybe a better way to state it is to ask what is the best you have heard in terms of today's replacement cost. With inflation at a conservative 7-10% currently and in recent past, the most expensive system would most likely be a recent one unless it was sooo out there in price that it just trumps everything before or since because the scale of price was orders of magnitude larger than anything else. Maybe a best way to ask is what is the most expensive 'stupid money' system you have heard? I cannot answer that one easily. I would have a hard time justifying much over 50k for a single system under any circumstances however, that's probably what will be spent on the primary system in the rebuilt house. So is that stupid money? Not really, but much over that would be for me.

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