Aren't you the hypercritical one Larry? You speak as though you can't stand the idea of what people on this site do with their hifi or how they spend their time. If you're not into hifi, what are you doing here? I believe you're the one who should get a life and should dedicate all your time to something that are of interest to you rather than on something you hate. You even took the time you register a user name on this site. The only reason why I registered in Audiogon is to purchase something here. It doesn't sound like you want to buy anything here anyway. Why did you register? The truth of matter is if you draw a graph with the an axis designating cost and a y asis designating sound quality, and dollars you have to spend for every step of sound improvement, the chart is will not be linear. Everyone in this hobby realizes this and all have a limit or tolerance of how much they are willing to spend to achieve their acceptable sound quality. Seems like you don't believe in this dollar spent vs. sound quality relationships. You come across as "we" audiophilers are over focusing our efforts and money just to reproduce a simple sound wave and that we don't need. You wrote as though we treat sound as a luxury. You make us feel as though we can simply live with the quality of sound that comes equal to a VW bug. If you preach this philosophy, I expect you live your life in the simpliest way without the owning anything fancier than the basic necessities, right? You better not be driving a car cause you can take public transportations, have any expensive clothes because it's a luxury, and etc. If everything you own exceeds your the basic necessity of life, then you're just a hypercrite and have no merit to your argument.
HiFi is an opinion - nothing more
The audiophile community spends vast amounts of time and resources trying to claim truth about something that boils down to be no more than one persons opinion. I read where some proclaimed audiophile has created nirvana by rotating his loudspeaker 1 degree off axis when used with a certain type of interconnect cable. Phew... I might remind everyone that the human ear and the mechanics of hearing are highly individual, namely we don't all hear alike. Add to that the processing that goes on in the brain to add value to what we hear, we end up with nothing more than an opinion not fact. Case in point, a system set up to accurately reproduce sound in terms of phase, and frequency amplitude response would not be desirable by most audiophiles. It would sound bright, thin and certainly not have enough bass. Most audiophiles would prefer the sound of a Bose Wave Radio to a an accurately set up HiFi. Get some acoustical instrumentation sometime and try it for yourself. To all of you who savor the delicious warmth of your tuuuuby like transistors and transparent capacitors, I say get a life. If you find yourself basking in the latest techno tweek and thirteenth set of speakers, I suggest you go off line, visit a used car lot, find an old VW Beatle, turn on the radio and enjoy the music again. Re-invent yourself.