Perhaps we should stick with midfi...

I have been a part of this hobby for some 46 years and if there is one lesson I learned it is that equipment matching and system synergy has a far greater correlation with musical performance, overall transparency, and general tonal accuracy than cost. In my lifetime I have heard in my own home three superb systems, and each one of them had a total cost of less than $8,000. A friend of many years standing, who also happens to be a reviewer for one of the two leading audio publications, described one of these attampts as possibly one of the best in-home system he had ever heard. Sadly, I succumbed to the supposed "improvement itch" and moved backwards, rather than forward, a bitter experience many of us have encountered.