This notion of high-end comes up often in our relatively wealthy world (at least the part of the world most of us inhabit).
There are several attributes that cost money. One is performance, but in the audio world that costs very little these days. This is a good thing for those whose primary focus is performance.
Then, there is the buying and owning experience--the way owning something makes one feel. Veblen doesn't really have this right, in my view, and seeks to place a moral implication on the choices we have in the market, based on price. Sometimes, buying extreme performance for very little money is as satisfying an ownership experience as buying and owning something that reflects luxury and exclusivity. But most who claim to be impervious to the attributes of luxury and exclusivity are usually so only in some areas, unless they truly are financially constrained. So, the guy on this forum who insists that low-cost, high-performing audio products represent the moral ceiling of expenditure might have a $100,000 bass boat in the shed or a $5000 fly-fishing rod and reel.
(The first example in a Google search--I know nothing about fly fishing:
https://thomasandthomas.com/collections/rods/products/individualist?variant=3547665217)
And when challenged, they will claim that the sheer craft of what they are using brings joy quite unrelated to measured performance. Note that I observe many owners of extremely expensive hunting and fishing apparatus--far in excess of what is needed for performance--are not in the ranks of the landed gentry at all.
There is nothing remotely immoral about these choices. Frankly, the only required justification for one who is meeting other financial obligations (including the obligation to be generous) is that they want it and they have the money.
(What is immoral, however, is attempting to persuade people falsely that paying more necessarily achieves higher measured performance, particularly when the "measure" isn't measurable at all.)
So, I might select audio equipment with beautifully constructed circuits and machined-from-billet cases, with equipment design that simply gives me joy. It might not perform better than something from Topping, but equipping one's hobby isn't usually just about performance. When I buy a Topping, it's a transaction with Amazon and a delivery truck driver. When I buy, say, a Krell, it's a positive-reinforcement personal interaction with a sales executive (probably the owner of the store) and comes with a significant service delivery, if I want it to. And when I see "Krell" on that amp, and know that it was hand-assembled by a guy in Connecticut whose name I can (probably) pronounce and who is being paid a fair wage for doing so, I might feel a satisfaction unrelated to the lack of audio distortion.
Someone mentioned a Rolex watch. That is a bit of an extreme example, for two reasons: 1.) A Rolex as become the standard status symbol (in America, at least) of the newly rich, and 2.) while the quality is quite good (for a mechanical watch) it is also rather pricey with respect to its competitors, new or used, because of (1). One might instead own, say, a Ulysse Nardin Marine Chronometer, which is as advanced as a Rolex, likely even more accurate, much more uniquely (yet still classically) styled, more beautifully crafted, and maybe half the price on the secondary market. Or, they might own a Zenith chronograph which in most every measurable dimension--including craft and cachet, but not including price--is on a par with Rolex. I would contend that my Breguet Type XX is on a par with Rolex and is made by a company with deeper luxury credentials, but on the secondary market it will be less than half the price simply because I won't be competing with every successful car dealer or real-estate agent in the U.S. to own one. Mechanical watches are accurate enough but they are not accurate at all compared to quartz watches (well, except maybe for that Ulysse Nardin, my example of which is accurate within 15 seconds a month--standard quartz accuracy). But that isn't the point of them, any more than getting to the grocery story is the point of owning, say, an Aston Martin.
All that said, price thresholds are not a dimension that really makes a lot of sense to me for defining what is "high-end". The high-end experience is about who made it, how they made it, how it was sold, how owning it makes me feel, how it looks, the story that I can tell others about it, and stuff like that. Excelling in all those areas usually means a high price, but that's a byproduct of value only to those newly rich car dealers, it seems to me.
By the way, child-like writing that is an honest expression from a non-English-speaking writer beats perfect grammar from an AI embellishment bot any day.
Rick "not an AI bot" Denney
