I think you need to consider many factors like room size, music preferences, etc.
In a big 5000+ sq ft room, if one wants to play Hans Zimmer's symphony with front rows seats kind of dynamics with very low distortions, then maybe something over $10K would be needed....
I actually don’t disagree. But you have begun to define “hi-fi”, instead of being unwilling to do so: SPL and dynamics similar to the front row of a Hans Zimmer live performance, with very low distortion, in a 5000+ square-foot room. Lessee—105-dB peaks, 60-dB quiet bits, 45-50–dB ambient noise, two seconds of decay without echo, distortion under 1%, the lady two seats down rummaging in her purse.
How does that translate to my 300-square-foot living room? I don’t hear distortion on orchestral music (with electronic additions—though Rick Wakeman, not Hans Zimmer) played with peaks at 105 dB SPL at the listening position 7 feet in front off the speaker plane. And the quiet bits are perfectly hearable as quiet as they are on the recording, which is rarely 45 dB down from the peaks. Distortion at the listening position is pretty low, but I grant that more money might make it lower (or not). But I can’t for the life of me translate my small, relatively dead living room with a concert hall. Maybe it’s the comfy chair.
I can’t make my system as loud as a rock concert on the first row. But then I don’t want to.
Rick “thinking there’s more to hi-fi than dynamics” Denney