http://www.safehaven.com/article-1458.htm

Here's an interesting article on cpi calculation manipulation which covers what we all already know to be true--that it ain't easy out there. Given a finite amount of money for the individual, and that finite amount being pulled toward new priorities and escalating taxes, it's easy to agree that true "hi-fi" is certainly not for everybody. But was it ever?

I would however seek to contradict the posit that there is no affordable quality gear out there. My first recollections of serious audio reproduction were on my grandfather's Marantz and Bozak setup...a magical and wonderous warmth. Having experienced that and some modern gear I think it's clear that today's transducers and digital and certainly analog machinations tend to be much more accurate, even the "mid-priced ones".

I think it's more reasonable to lament the very real fact that in today's fast-paced, immediate gratification world fewer and fewer folks take the time to properly calibrate a system and work toward synergy within a room. How many times have you looked at the Audiogon gallery and seen a set of 30k rear-ported speaks shoved up against a wall in a room more befitting an spread in Architectural Digest than Stereophile? Happens in the showrooms too.

Combine that with the recording industry's purposeful corruption of the very sources that we use and it's no surprise that in a lot of situations things sound bad. But, still, it's out there, you just have look at other avenues (like E-Stat suggested the Telarcs of the world).

As an aside, I've owned both an Audemars Piguet and a Breitling and they were both some of the poorest designed, worst implemented excuses for a "timepiece" ever. But, that's just me. I'm also of a mind that if I ever spent 50k---for that matter 5k---on equipment just to impress my peers that I'd have to haul myself outside and kick my own ass.