Why so expensive??

If you can afford to buy this stuff, most likely you are buying it for the looks and the good sound is just a perk (IMHO, of course).

Agreed. The big effort goes into industrial design. The other challenge is to market and sell perhaps only 50 models ever and to provide 10 years of support for parts. The advantage is that the cost is probably negligible compared to the price (perhaps 5% may be 10% max) - so the markup is huge when a sale occurs.

The end result is more akin to rare and high-end "art" than a purely functional instrument to reproduce music. Sound reproduction is clearly secondary, just as keeping time is not the primary objective of a Rolex (although they pretend it is) => primarily it is jewelery/fashion/image/life style apparel.

i believe wisdom audio manufacturers a stereo system including amplifiers and speakers costing about 1 million.

how many cars can you buy for 1 million dollars (excluding taxes) ?

i think bill gates and warren buffet can order several pairs without concern for the cost.

It's likely that the only people buying at this level are either reviewers purchasing direct from manufacturer at accommodation prices or financial wizzards with lots of practice driving hard bargains.

My interest in the WAVAC would be if it indeed offered performance that no other amp could approach, if it showed the potential of what could be done if price were no object and that the result was really a leap forward in sound quality, a new, significant approach to circuit design, or impentation of new parts that truly made a signficant improvement in amplifier design. If that were the case, then over time we would figure out how to get that level of performance at real world prices. I can't help but suspect that the WAVAC does not really do this, but I've never heard it. Now, it may also serve the purpose of audio jewelry, but I have little interest on that side of the ledger.