I agree. When you look at old hifi, like Japanese turntables in the late 70s, you really get the sense that the best and brightest engineers were working on these products, with significant financial backing, so they could really push the state of the art. I don't get that impression when I look at modern hifi. How many speaker companies are just affluent dilletantes putting expensive drivers in expensive cabinets (I am among them?) Where did the cutting edge engineering go? Purifi makes some cool drivers, but it's a very niche thing, the class D amps have successfully commodified amplification, but who is creating the future? Topping and SMSL make traditional hifi components with crazy precision, Revel and KEF are making very refined passive speakers - but fundamentally it's all old technology. Yamaha was making beryllium tweeters fifty years ago.
Where is the real innovation happening in sound reproduction? Sound bars, line array PA systems, homepod speakers and these headphones. These ANC headsets aren't cheap, but I opened one up the other day and started to realize how incredible they were. The WH-1000xm5 has eight microphones pointed in different directions, a battery that lasts 30 hours, and it weighs less than a pair of HD-600.
