What makes up an

Albert, well done! To my mind you set the right accents just where they belong and as you so rightly say, the balance between resolution and bandwidth and forgetting all about sound and being drawn into the music is the more difficult the more revealing your system becomes to be. To my mind, the right balance can only be achieved, if you are intimately familiar with all kinds of live music and only after a lot of hard work.

I can't tell you what it is or exactly what it takes - but it is immediately recognizable when you hear it.

there should be some objective criteria, including construction and parts. there should also be some standards of performance.

otherwise, it becomes a matter of opinion.

for example, i don't consider an oppo dvd player as "high end". however, there may be some disagreement .

without some "hard" confirming evidence, the term could be added to a list of debatable and ambiguous audiophile terms.

Hi,

I've spent some years building my system so that it is what meets my requirements for high-end listening. The only place I spent big money is on speakers, (5K, demo pair). The rest is pretty much mid-fi, (Marantz, Aragon, Musical Fidelity, using a Sonic Euphoria passive pre, bought used). What has made my system a cut above tha sum of its parts, is extensive mods on all my two channel gear. World of difference between what it sounded like stock, as opposed to what it sounds like now. It's another way to the high end, and you can do it over time, as money permits, send one component in a year, and before long, you've got a system that is very high end, yet musical.
Just another approach, but it worked well for me.

Regards,
Dan

I think that's an expression that can be filed away. One time it meant products that were produced by dedicated engineers and designers who wanted more than the commercial electronics of the 60's and 70's and developed a following that became an underground market of sorts. They took financial risks, some became rich, some gone broke, to redefine the audio art. Today, mega companies such as Marantz and Sony push out comparable - if not better - products for less money. Products that heavily borrowed concepts from these high end loners but with the economies of scale they could only dream of.

Today, there are some following the same independent, risk taking such as Magico and YG Acoustics attempting to go one above the commercial fare, but they do not comparably blow the socks off the larger Wilsons, Thiels, etc., the way Levinson and Pass trounced amplification back in the 70's.

That's why IMO it doesn't apply any more - the market is saturated with excellent gear, accessories and services at every price point making you hard-pressed to justify price equating to performance. One only has to look at all those Stereophile Class A components to realize that almost anything you buy nowadays is based on preference rather than a definitive pecking order.