After reading yesterday's post I am reminded about theinevitablefollowup questions people ask after first hearing a high-end stereo system. "Can I get that for $1000? If so, sign me up."
I always feel soinadequateexplaining how this system is a compilation of many hand-selected pieces of equipment, hours of hand tuning and thousands of dollars. To the new wannabe's that's an enormous hurdle to getting into the high-end. And here's the interesting part: it isn't the price, it's the package they want.
So there you have part of the conundrum in a nutshell - every single person I have ever demonstrated the system for wants one - yet there are no packaged solutions we can offer - at any price.
I would love to be able to just point them to a website, dealer, magazine - anything - and say, "start with system A and you'll get 80% of what you just heard". Instead, I am relegated to suggesting this or that speaker, piece of electronics, etc.
Dealers and catalogs of old used to put together packages like this - but for whatever reason - they don't any more.
High-end Wannabe's don't know what's possible until we show them - but then there's nowhere to go.
Someone ought to fix that.