Has anyone made the jump to $uper High end and were disappointed?

@boneman

thanks for the mention

i will say that you are right about the room, it is the most difficult piece to attain and perfect.  My room is nowhere close but it is dedicated and I have no waf to deal with.  Maybe I can perfect the dimensions and room construct with the next house if I am so lucky.

But yes, I have a symmetric 18x15x9 room with slanted ceilings and no odd cubbies or halls.  I have the absorption down pat and just need to work on diffusion.

The experience in my main room is far more of an "event" than any of my 2 lesser systems.  The Sonus Faber Olympica 3 system in my family room is a pale facsimile in comparison. 

from a thread, on another forum... on damping materials - a post I made today:

What it comes down to (took many years to zero in on the true issues at hand) is that a interestingly high number of designers and most electronics people have zero (or near zero) information on how the ear actually works, and how this correlates to electronics.

Doing it right, requires that a quite wide swath of data be understood and brought to bear on the problem. Then to design and build along those lines. and then..get it out to the public.

....At which point, one would just be seen as another prophet screaming on a stage among a thousand other prophets screaming on their stages, all in the same room. Truth or correctness in these areas has but one voice in a room of a thousand voices.

Pretty darned difficult to see it, is the end result.

The fact that each person has different results in a scenario that should be uniformly clear, brings this point home, quite effectively. That is, if people look at the whole scenario with enough clarity in thought. There is an order to this thing, this issue... this industry wide fundamental issue, but it can be difficult to see.

~~~~~~~~~

Basically, we’ve become so inured to the complexity, the sheer Gordian knot-like characteristics of the issues... that we’ve settled on the idea that the differences are the norm and nothing is really truly correct. When in fact, this is not true. I detest anything factualized and thus dogmatized (as both create and maintian circular dead ends), but there is a way out- a more corrected path in this audio issue.

I did propose the basics of a path out of this particular dark woods and I did it in what is essentially a room full of audio designers. The blowtorch thread on DIYaudio.

I’ve been waiting for a few years to see if it bears fruit.

I gave the OP a bit more thought, and reflected on what I wrote a 'few' posts back - - the original question, summarized, was "have you been disappointed by the high end" - or another way to read it is 'was the dollars worth it'. So...buried in my life history post, a few back, I mentioned a journey into low-power, high efficiency. This was in late 90's ('98-'99). That was no where near high-end $$$$$, but it did cost me some money. It sucked. I tried - and it was like a carrot-on-a-stick and I was the camel. Bass was problematic in my room, mids got over powering. I never found a horn that (I could afford) I liked - and Fostex drivers were OK, but lets revist that bass issue. Oh - lets roll some tubes now. It's an interconnect thing. Ugh. Maybe I'm not putting enough money into it (but my pocketbook is bleeding - oh, maybe I have no business even trying this if my pocketbook isn't deep enough). Hah.  So - was that venture worth it? Nope.

Oh, well, I guess that's the way the cookie crumbles. 🍪 No offense.

I think one thing that plays a key role (no matter what audio $$ level) is each new addition (or improvement) may highlight some other weakness that did not stand out before. Even if very minor. That is where "tweaking" with things like cables, room treatments, power cords, etc may come in. I purchased my new Nuforce amp a couple months ago. The bass and the clarity was there. However, just a smidge harsh on upper frequencies. I purchased a new tube Pre amp and the harshness is gone and I have silky smooth mids. I was not expecting, when I purchased the Nuforce amp, to pay an additional $3500 for a tube pre. It's a constant give and take