Where are the young audiophiles?

@sokogear B&O was certainly a function follows form company through the years and I agree with you regarding their sound quality. I will admit I had a B&O turntable in college anchored by a pretty mediocre receiver driving some old Frazier Seven speakers. It was the only turntable I could afford that didn't mistrack terribly when there was a rowdy get together LOL.

Once again, wealth is worn differently by different people as we can all agree. You are somewhat correct that many high net worth individuals are listed in Forbes, et al and they may be easily identified while there are numerous others who may not.

For example, when we see a company go public and they speak of the founder's 30% stake in the company now being worth billions, there is typically less fanfare assigned to those who funded the startup in the background. I have to tread carefully but for every face we see ringing the bell at the NYSE there are faces we will never see or hear about....they prefer it that way. Then, there are those who religiously avoid the public markets to avoid the accompanying public scrutiny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy-VTC33GaM

Check out this interview, about the 7:40 mark it sort of speaks to the role that aesthetics play.

Of course an architect cares most about aesthetics.....no surprise there. My philosophy is whatever sounds best unless it looks ridiculous or doesn't fit.

I think that is true audio sickness, but some would say they don't care about ridiculous looks and if it doesn't fit, move it or make room or modify it! They may be the truest, sickest audiophiles - I'm not there, and am less like it than when I was in college.

I doubt the vast majority of young or old audiophiles are purchasing and or researching their audio purchases through audio dealers. Nearly all the audiophiles I deal with at any level are diy their systems. Look at plethora of mid level audio available today, phone systems are where its at for young budding audiophiles. Perhaps they move up to loudspeaker system, perhaps not, time will tell. Audio dealers are obsolete for many of us these days.
And then you have lossless streaming doing relatively good business these days, based on responses on this site it seems many older audiophiles reject streaming audio as high end. Younger budding audiophiles are hearing music with increasing higher fidelity and may buy in to better equipment in future. And to say new recordings are crap is total nonsense, yes, some are victims of loudness wars, but get away from the most popular, commercial recordings, tons of nicely recorded contemporary recordings. I have well over 2500 original vinyl and 3500 cd rips on my NAS,  and tons of streams available to me, recording quality is all over the place with all sources.
I reiterate this is the golden age of audio with even greater possibilities ahead. Younger generations have greater access to much better audio equipment and far more music than we did. As to whether they become card carrying audiophiles is not yet determined. How many of us older generation regularly sat down and listened intently to music, evaluating and critiquing sound quality. And then over time we hear some deficiencies, upgrade time, put on repeat ad nauseam. This is the definition of an audiophile, a small demographic then, likely small demographic in the future.

daledeee1, that is true to a point, but a lot of that is because the supply chains are broken.