The Single Piece That Started Today's HIGH END ?

It really was in the mid 1980's that the sudden price jump surprised me!
Like the Infinity IRS before the jump was $20,000 and soon after was $70,000.
That is a BIG jump.
Almost everything in high end had that giant price jump about then.
Why I do not know.

How do you define 'today's high end'. If your definition is based on the beginning of major emphasis on 3D imaging then I would have to nominate the ARC SP10II in the early 80's and the CJ Primere 3 as well although sonically it was not as balanced (neutral) as the SP10II.

I think it's naive to believe that the high-end began with the introduction of a single component... Probably a better question would have been: "Who were some of the early pioneers of high-end audio?"

When I think "vintage," I think of names like Fisher, Scott, Klipsch, JBL, Marantz, and McIntosh. And I'm sure there were quite a few before those. One of my friend's dads had a nice console when I was about 12, which had an Ampex tube reel-to-reel tape deck, Fisher tube amp and tuner, and he also had a cool Rek-O-Kut turntable, I think it had a Fairchild arm.

My own foray into higher performance audio began with solid-state gear from Layfayette Radio in the late '60s, and a little later I bought the original AR turntable with a Grado cartridge, a Dynaco ST-120 amp and PAT-4 preamp and some AR 3A speakers. I had a pair of AR 2Ax speakers as rear surrounds in an early pseudo-quad setup. It was kind of cool at the time. Later I got into tubes, electrostatic speakers, Stax headphones, and all types of other gear.