(Sorry for the incoherent rant that starts now) I've built high-end loudspeakers for about 9 years, and I'm of two minds when reading this article. While it's nice for a mainstreamish outlet to describe the experience of listening to a high-end audio system, there exists so much dis/misinformation in this article that it makes my skin crawl. So I will attempt to explain what I think high-end audio is (or should be) all about without all the journalistic BS (both from the gizmodo and the stereophile guy).

The purpose of a high-end audio system is to create music that is indistinguishable from live sound. This is a really hard thing to do and my guess is at best, we are only 20% of the way there. But, given that most consumer-level stuff is probably at 0.42%, listening to a good high-end audio system is generally nothing short of incredible. The thing that really gets people when they first listen to the "good stuff" is that on a good high-end audio system, there will be sounds that don't seem to be coming from the speakers themselves, but from somewhere else in the room. The good stuff really is better, but you really can spend a ton of money and get shitty products (to be honest, I've listened to the $65k MAXX3's featured in the article and its more expensive sibling, the $125k X1s, and I thought they were decent speakers, but certainly not worth more than $8k).

The problem with high-end audio, especially from a business perspective is two-fold. 1) How do you make better speakers than your competitors if the best you can do is 20% and you don't even know how to get to that 80%? and 2) How are you supposed to differentiate yourself from your competitors when the end goal is that every single speaker is supposed to sound exactly the same?

Enter the magazines Stereophile and The Absolute Sound. These journalists with "golden ears" will purportedly tell us mere mortals what differences there are between speakers. The ones who do the best (like the Wilson Audio's featured in the article) will also get the most money.

So, every manufacturer will push to get the best reviews from these magazines, and will even go to a sort of soft corruption to garner a strong review. During the review process, an equipment manufacturer will send his/her component to the reviewer for a few months so the reviewer can demo it in his/her own demo room. In an ideal world the reviewer will review the product accurately and send it back. What actually happens is that the "demo" unit will become available to the reviewer indefinitely without a need to return the product. The reviewer, however, already has a component in his own listening room, so why does he want another one? Well, because the review can sell it and make some extra money on used equipment (30% of a 10k CD player is still a lot of money). If the review pans the product, though, then the resale price will be far less than if the reviewer praises the product. So voila, instant good review. (If you read stereophile for a few months, you will see every other issue that the reviewer has found the best component he has ever listened to).

This sort of practice seems to have been going on for at least a couple decades. Instead of trying to solve the insanely difficult problem of making speakers sound better, high end audio manufacturers spend their money on branding and shenanigans with reviewers. Their equipment (more for speakers than say CD players) will always be better than consumer grade stuff because no one has worked on the problem of making a better speaker and consumer grade speakers are made to be manufactured as cheaply as possible. The high end audio industry is a real mess because everyone forgot why there are here in the first place.

Btw, it would be interesting if the less financially strapped members started designing speakers (you're all smart enough to do as good a job as Wilson Audio). The drivers for these speakers are available to people like us, because driver manufacturers do not do enough volume to stop selling to the DIY community. For instance, the drivers for the MAXXs break down roughly as follows: ~$150/ea for the Focal tweeters, ~$175/ea for Scanspeak midranges, ~$350/ea for the smaller Focal woofer, and ~$500 for the bigger one. While that ~$3000 for the drivers alone, that still a lot less than $65k (and besides, you could actually do better with a lot less money).