Although he is right on the whole marketing thing..."Things are seldom what they seem..." (Rogers & Hammerstein HMS Pinafore...Hey, I'm straight and not into showtunes, but I really LOVE that line)

Keep in mind here that there are additional costs that are significant in making separates, and we will have to assume that no marketing contamination exists in this example.

Dedicated separate components will often cut fewer corners in design than integrated type components. Since price is less of a factor (often, but not always), the designer will make choices that he wouldn't or couldn't make if the budget were tightened. Some of these will affect the sound, some are made for purposes of "statement". The fact remains that the component will have to stand on its own merits. Now marketing and reviews contaminate this quite badly, but in it's purest form, this is what happens. The power supply will probably be better, parts may be better, switches, connectors, etc. In the end, it is, or should be a "statement" product and offer exemplary performance. (I'm still in my perfect world here)

When you combine different functions in the same box, you save a ton of money. You share a power supply, you only have to design and ship one box, one CE/UL certification, one owners manual, and you don't need to order a whole bunch of parts like connectors to hook the two units together. To keep the price more attractive, you will probably use a simpler, though maybe still large power supply, use more "run of the mill" parts, and, due to larger numbers of sales available, your cost basis per unit will be much lower. R&D can be spread over a larger family of similar products which also adds up. Simply stated, if it cost you a million bucks a year to keep the factory open and you only sold 1000 units, the factory overhead for each unit will have to be $1000 plus what parts, labor, shipping, and other expenses add up to. We would be easily talking about a $5-6000 product here. If you made 100,000 units, the cost would be only $10 per unit plus everything else. If you take a company such as Sony, Pioneer, or Yamaha with R&D resources that only a multi-faceted tech company would have, you can make and sell some amazing products for really stupid cheap prices. However, often times sound goes to the background and features rise to the top in importance, and decisions get made that you may not agree with.

So, in a nutshell, it isn't as cut and dried as a lot of these guys want it to be. Shades of Gray. Not that there aren't some perceived "high end" companies that make products that are complete dogs that sell on their name. Caveat Emptor is the name of the game. There aren't many guarantees out there so use your ears and think it through. It isn't as hard as you think to figure it all out.