I know that in audio we use fucked-up terminology that over the course of years audio propaganda pimps of all calibers impended into minds of feeble audio people. High-End Audio in today world means nothing that what I feel, is it possible to clear up the definition of High-End Audio? Let see commonly understood by High-End Audio. Wikipedia might not be a reference source but it does reflect well the common understanding:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-end_audio

If to clear up the BS that Wikipedia written then the sensible

“High-End Audio is a term used to describe a class of consumer home audio equipment marketed to audio enthusiasts ….solely on the basis of sound quality”

I do not think that I misquoted Wikipedia text; I just dropped the less relevant wording. Esoteric, advanced or novel sound reproduction technologies to punch the envelope of sound quality? Sounds about right. There is a twist in this definition. In my view High-End Audio is not a collection of techniques and methods but a collection of understandings.

Let embrace the “equipment solely on the basis of sound quality” definition and look at an example.  Let pretend that you have a very good setup with a lot of advance equipment that does fine sound. Somebody come to you and point out some specific problems of your sound. Let pretend that you paid attention, worked on the problems and fixed it. I think it is plausible scenario, would it be? Now less see what in this scenario was High-End Audio:

A) Your based on sound quality equipment

B) Your guest’s and eventually your understanding of what sound need to be

Obviously the answer would be “B” as “High-endness” of your equipment did not changed by only the application of your equipment changed.  Now, pretend that you have a very good and advanced listening techniques and know “how sound need to be” and “what is good for sound” but you have no “esoteric, advanced or novel sound reproduction technologies”, instead your awareness extrapolates the demanded sound quality from a preverbal “table radio” , are you participant of High-End Audio? I would say very much so.

So, challenge that what people out there understand as High-End Audio in fact just a meaningless term as meaningful as 0 degree in Fahrenheit scale. Can I offer my own definition of High-End Audio? Sure I can.

High-End Audio is a set of a person’s realizations how different sound reproduction techniques affect own interpretation of musicality and sound reproduction results. The High-End Audio expertise is to be waked up at 3AM, be given a let say TT with absolutely unknown characteristics of tonearm, cartridge and anything else and be asked to get from all of it Proper  Default Sound with using nothing else then just own hearing.  Interesting that in this  3AM example the final result you get is not as important as the direction you go for your  attempt to setup this TT.

So, High-End Audio is just an amorphous set of own comprehension, not wonder that the stupid audio industry never was able to sell it and to convert it to a tradable commodity.