When someone tells you it's a $40,000 amp, does it sound better?

Deer creek audio and dsp is great for two channel listening.  But they really don't have a workable solution for home theater DSP.  
 

A good DSP arrangement solves a lot of room problems and equipment problems and is underrated and not fully appreciated.  Probably because the interfaces and the product are so difficult to work with. It's a real pain in the ass to deal with DSP the way it's set up and really shouldn't be.  Mcintosh has a room treatment box that provides no graph before after and no way to make changes and requires microphone for sampling just like everybody else. It may sound very nice and very good but I wanna see something and I wanna be able to change something.

Deer creek audio is very convoluted when it comes to home theater listening. They say you can use it for this but it's really not workable.

I believe a couple of things are contributing to the perception of higher priced components sounding better.  The first is anticipation bias.  If someone says "listen to this amazing $40,000 amplifier I just bought" there might be the expectation that such an expensive piece of gear has to sound better because it's so expensive.  This might be more so if you can't afford to buy one yourself.  If you can afford it and bite the bullet, far be it from you to question that your investment didn't make a profound improvement in your system. The second thing has to do with appearances.  1/2" thick double anodized front panels with fancy engraving and machining and fluted knobs, edge lit glass inserts, exotic looking feet, etc. all give the appearance of something special.  This has to sound better; just look at how beautiful this thing is.  Electrons could care less what front panels and knobs look like.  But we can't see electrons or how ripple-free the DC voltage coming out of the power supply is.  How the gear looks though is something one can sink their teeth into.  Appearances seem to make a lot of difference to many and the trend of audiophiles placing their beautiful looking gear between their speakers for the world to see supports that theory.  Years ago, I remember speaker systems hidden behind an open weave curtain.  The electronics were off to the side or behind the listener and there was nothing to distract you from the music which just seemed to come from the performers.     

I hate displaying gear. Whenever someone comes over it's a distraction. I don't mind displaying the speakers but all the other complexity of gear it's just horrifying to deal with when someone starts asking questions.

I'm not going to get into an audio discussion versus just sitting back Play some music in the background that sounds really really nice well doing something other then drooling over how good something soun… having a party with all the gear hanging out is awful.

So I've got a cabinet and while some stuff is exposed most is not directly viewable/camouflaged enough so I don't get confronted with all kinds of questions.

I wish I had a pantry room to put it all in but when it's just me I like to have it out so I don't go nuts every time I want to change a cable or access something. No

“It tells me their have more money than brains.”

Yeah… no. All the audiophiles with large budgets I have known have earned their money. They used their brains and hard work to get their money and use their brains and hard work to acquire audiophile equipment to make absolutely sure they get value what they pay for.

OP, fortunately my gear is in my man cave floor… I guess we are also hermits. I think I have had five or six people down here in twenty years. My system is for me only.