I have a 10-year-old budget Pioneer AVR in my living room, in a 5.1 setup with a $100 Andrew Jones Elac subwoofer. It outperforms the very fancy 2-channel system in the bedroom. I like it better, my kids like it better, etc etc. (Yeah, ok, it outperforms it subjectively. Before you throw popcorn, please note that I consider myself an objectivist and I'm an EE.) By "outperforms," I mean that everyday surround sound sounds better, is a better experience than any stereo system. Looking at it from the perspective of the normal, average person, is what I mean. (Sorry if I offended anyone by saying stereo sted 2 channel!)
I think a lot of the search for ultimate sound, and the bias here toward SOTA performance -- which I share -- is a tic. We are just more rational about it than the magical cable non-engineers at Stereophile.
The deprecation of regular, affordable gear, where it occurs, seems to be backstopped by an unstated by nevertheless real belief that there are some secret sounds hidden in the recording that we won't hear unless we have expensive gear with a SOTA noise floor. Why then is music mixed so that it sounds good on boomboxes and transistor radios? (Sorry, showing my age here.) This stems from a corporate event about 15 years ago with Thomas Dolby, where he told a story about how Paul McCartney makes sure all his stuff sounds good on cheap mono radio/boombox type gear.)
I feel like I should start a thread on "search for the magical, hidden sounds in recordings." I mean, audio is a mature technology. I like the fancy stuff (ASR fancy, not Stereophile waste-of-money fancy) as much as anyone, but come on. I think all those "bewieve your ears" (misspelling is deliberate) folks would have more of a case if they were "bewieving" good-quality inexpensive gear, instead claiming they need stratospherically priced but shittily measuring equipment to support their ear-based "bewiefs."