What's going on with the audio market?

As a buyer I want stay away from any upgraded  or modified speakers ,cd players,amps:) No insults or offense to people who doing it.Just bad experience when bought modiefied cd player.
 

@extravaganza , 
you would need to research whom is doing the modding. There are couple of great people out there with experience and integrity whom mods audio equipment because of passion for music but not for commercial reasons. Hopes you can continue to support them so these small group of people survives. 
-philip

Lots of great responses here. Obviously its a combination of several things such as format changes, economy, baby boomers getting older and their kids not catching on to 2 channel audio, outrages prices, saturation, etc...  One thing I do think is cool, vinyl has been making a comeback and I have seen younger generations gravitate towards it. There's nothing like having that big vinyl disc in your hand and watching it spin. Hopefully when the market stabilizes we will see things come back around. I have never seen in my life the economy, racial relations, greed and many many other crazy things happen as it has the last 8 years or the Obama era.  Not starting a political discussion but in my opinion lots of areas of society and business have gone to crap. Hopefully some of it can recover. :)

btw. I was talking about official factory upgrades, such as new drivers for the "same" speakers and vibration control feets. i agree a 100% that homegrown changes can destroy the sales-price.

The audiophile market is dead.

BTW, you can get great great great sound with ($500) av receiver and cheap ($100-200) speakers. The trick is use mogami speaker cable.

I had a $10k+ audiophile system. I sold it at quite a big loss. My current system cost less than $1000 and sounds way better (active monitors are amazing bang for the buck). Technologies have moved on.

I still got a pair of audiophile floorstander left, I might write it completely off soon.