Romy the Cat wrote:

This weekend I visited a friend of my in NY who played to me his playback. I need to say that I did not care too much about his playback and visited him as I like him not his audio adventure but the Sound of his playback did surprised me. It was not what we call high-end installation. It was not only modest but it was with zero audio ambition. It was very large room. Perhaps 1000 sq feet with perhaps 30 feet ceiling. Harwood floors, glossy naked walls. It was not even pleasant to talk in the room as it was very reverberant. A pair of mall floor standing loudspeakers, a pair of SS mono-blocks, two Linn TTs and some kind of SS preamp. I do not know the amps, the system has one huge custom made tube power amp but it blew up at the very beginning. I very much not expected to have anything resembling to good sound in that room but it was surprisingly very nice. I was in particularly surprised with the loudspeakers that I never seen. They were perhaps 4-5 feet tall, JBL made. One huge port on back with 14” JBL driver. One MF compression drive with sound-like soft-aluminum diaphragm, loaded to the JBL sloped CD vertical horn. One time-misaligned titanium-sounding tweeter. Very modest but I need to say very nice. The friend of my told that they are out of production now but when they were available they coasted $10K. Rgs, Romy the Cat

Romy the Cat wrote:

atilsley169, I would ditch your request to define term high-end. I think you might do it for yourself if the defining of the term is important to you. Your second question however is very interesting. You ask if the purchase of a $20k speaker in itself not be regarded as audio ambition? The question that you formed is of the reason why I (respectfully) did not express any interest about progress of your audio inflation. No, I do not celebrate the accuracy of my people reading skills - that is long time ago proven phenomena. I however do want to point out that you need to clear up in your head what speaker are what they used for and what motivation of audio people might have to use or do not use loudspeakers. I might give you a tip, if you would like. Try to practice audio without loudspeakers, amplifiers and the rest of “things”.  If you define your yourself how to practice audio while having your power amp not even connected to the power outlets then you might discover another meaning of audio. Yes, there are people who feel that purchasing of a $20k speaker or $40K amplifier is some kind of audio ambition. For all intended purpose I do not allow them in my listening room….