What Does 80 Grand Get You Nowadays?

Could be room or front end but for sure the marantz is an issue.  Replace with a momentum or progression and the system will be substantially better.  You should file a crime report on whomever connected those cables!

@devinplombier wrote:

@onhwy61 

My experience in that shop was (clearly) not positive, and I sought to tell it without embellishment nor caricature. Should we only say nice things?

I started this thread to spark a honest conversation about the relationship between sound quality and money spent. This, I think, is something we all relate to, although in practice we go about it in very different ways.

Well put. 

How about you, have you heard a lot of gear whose sound was way out of whack with its price?

Sure, but I’m not that surprised anymore when it happens. In fact it’s rather the other way ’round; when I hear good sound it’s more like a "Cool, now what is this about?!"-feeling. 

Btw. I heard the Sabrina’s at a friend’s place earlier this year: very detail-oriented (slightly hot, even - to my taste), fairly resolved and they threw a good soundstage, but coming down to it they sounded like speakers and didn’t make the music flow in an organic, coherent, tonally accurate and effortless fashion. To make matters worse they’re simply too small as floor standing speakers and struggle to fill a moderately large listening space at elevated SPL’s (and no, I’m not thinking crazy levels here). "But there’s only an 8" woofer per cab," they say - yes, but at that price? 

Where I find the price and sound quality relationship to be turned on its head in a sense, certainly compared to the high-end arena in hi-fi, is with speakers and power amps in particular. Here I go pro segment and want physics in speakers to be accommodated, actively configured and through great designs. I’ve found studio amps from a british manufacturer that are among the best I’ve heard - all at a fraction of the price compared to "high-end" offerings. Getting the amp to speaker interface, physics (incl. high sensitivity), design prowess and overall integration with acoustics in place is the major part - all with the intention to significantly minimize the bottleneck here. 

Where price is more of a factor, to a point, is with the DAC, streamer and preamp (if such is used as a separate device). If you have a highly resolving and transparent amp-speaker combo and good implementation, obviously this will be more apparent, and with the amp-to-speaker approach outlined above the basis for that to happen has favorable conditions. 

I go to my local shop twice a month. 4 rooms, about 150 speaker pairs. Whenever the expensive ones (above 20K) are hooked up, it’s always a younger dude in his 20s or 30s.
 

I used to frequent Stereo Exchange, Lyric Hi-Fi, Innovative Audio and Sound by Singer, Harvey Electronics (I’m dating myself here as some of these are long gone). I made various purchases from some of these stores.
Never have I ever observed 150 pairs of speakers on a showroom floor. And to have such a broad price range that would present speakers that are of interest to you, and at the same time to satisfy a need of some young dude who wants to blow off 20 grand on a pair of speakers, has very low probability factor. You judge people who have $20k to spend on speakers and you imply that they don’t know what they’re doing. Dude you need to get a life. In addition, whenever you say some dumb 💩 you claim it was sarcasm. No it wasn’t. It was just you spewing your nonsense. 

I am embarrassed for you to say this but you sounded less desperate and slightly more intelligible when you were stuck on your creepy masturbation theme

You must be an unemployed comedian.