“Civilian” reaction to your gear?

@kerrybh 

I agree with your comment about how people used to congregate at audio salons and learned about music. A corollary though, is that the music we had available spanned the time from analogue to digital, so many of us were accustomed to acoustic instruments. The younger crowd’s music is mostly electronic (going by the pop charts), so it’s not surprising they don’t react to a beautiful violin solo. The problem with that is that nearly all audiophile equipment is designed to make acoustic instruments sound like ’themselves’ as heard live. How do you evaluate when you listen to music that is "assembled" (e.g.,, the guitarist phones in (literally) his part of the music? I call it ’The Frankenstein effect’ in pop music: everything assembled, but very little of the music is ’real’ instruments. 
It’s no surprise that the young thing audiophiles are delusional and ’hearing things.’ They haven’t heard what we have, and consequently it is MUCH harder for them to evaluate music, when most of their musical diet is ’made up’ sounds from a computer. I’d think it snake oil, too, if I didn’t know intimately, the sound of a Yamaha flute, and someone was going on about all the ’low-level’ supposed detail. The kind of detail that distinguishes what Brand/model an instrument is instead of sounding like a generic flute (or any other instrument).

That was supposed to read, "It's no surpise that the young 'uns  think audiophiles are delusional and 'hearing things.'

My realtor was at the house last week and asked about my speakers, "What the hell are those, heaters?"  I replied, "Yes, it's a new type of radiator.  Can't you feel the heat?"  (She was standing in front of the amps.)

My wife is a first grade teacher.  She had a party at our house and invited all of her teacher friends and their husbands.  About 8 of us ended up downstairs in my man cave and everyone wanted to listen to my system.  I put on the Beatles Come Together and turned it up.  Everyone was amazed.  From there I had to take a bunch of request for music to stream.  But as far as I know, no one who was there looked into getting a stereo of their own.  

@mahler123 

"The stores disappear because there are no customers, but in our day the stores would create a demand from people that just were in them."

The younger generations don't have the discretionary funds to be able to consider such frivolities simply because we created an economic climate that has them focused on day-to-day survival. The "Greatest Generation" and the "Boomers" feel there is no need to leave anything to their children, grandchildren or any subsequent generation. They feel they need to take their accomplishments and their wealth to the grave with them.