Twl, good to hear from you again! If you check my original statement, I didn't say all high-end sucks, giving as example the C-J stuff. So yeah, buying an expensive component can pay off, but expense is not an indicator of quality: for that, talent is needed. I am saying that we are often misguided (meaning guided by others to bad decisions: press, manufacturers, peers), and that we should take a closer look at why cheaper equipment is so often more musical. Your thoughts on simpler-is-better are spot on, and we should look closer at this. As to the idler wheel thing, if you check my other thread you will see that I own some "high-end" decks, which is why the idler-wheel drives blew my mind in the first place, as I was shocked to hear an old abandoned technology so easily blow my high-end 'tables (I own a Maplenoll and an Audiomeca, both of which easily blow the Linn in terms of information, which I hasten to add is not everything: I love the sound of classic three-point suspension designs). This discovery was a complete accident, which was heard by a certain millionaire I knew in Europe, who funded my investigations into this with the aim of producing a marketable design: the result being the Lencco/Rega pairing and chassis. But the timing was bad, as at that time everyone was abandoning vinyl (with Shure terminating prodcution and so on) and idler-wheel technology very expensive to implement. The rumble issue, as I've pointed out, is due to poor implementation: just as we now know that a resonant box is a no-no in belt-drive designs, leading to all the exposed subchassis designs, solid plinths and so on here - so this applies doubly to idler-wheel designs, due to the more powerful motors. The fix is cheap and easy: a heavy, solid plinth instead of a cheap resonant one to sink the vibrations. This works very well, even if it seems primitive. The rumble issue is old propaganda/dogma from the days that belt-drives were touted as the new great improvement, which reminds me of the early days when solid-state first appeared, and tubes were dismissed as inferior. Again I point to the revered Sugano, who we must assume had good ears and a revealing system. Your comments are a breath of fresh air, as is your attitude! And I share in your "upper middle level" philosophy, which I follow myself, as I don't like to be distracted by too much information (for instance, I don't want to hear that one of my favourite pieces of music sounds like crap, preferring equipment that strikes a balance in which I can hear the information, which, being an audiophile I love, but which makes all my recordings enjoyable).