Why do I get the feeling that you so often miss the point of my postings? I think that in Canada, the version of English we speak here in the US is fairly well understood. I was comparing the approach Europeans and Americans take to problem solving given their different cultures, perspectives, economic realities, training, and overall outlook on life. The European view to oversimplify it is "less is more" or at least "less is enough." The American view is "more is more" and even "more is never enough." I'm not saying both speaker systems and all of the rest of this equipment isn't a ripoff. In fact I think it is. Even if it isn't, it is absurd given its relative importance in most people's lives. IMO, so is a 36" plasma television screen for $5000 cosidering you can get one that looks just about as good that isn't HDTV as a direct view for much less than half that. And if there are people willing to pay it, there is every reason for other people to exploit that market if they can.

It's when you start taking this stuff apart and you see how little there really is to it, that you begin to get the idea of just how big a ripoff much of it is. On another web site, I posted on a thread about two loudspeakers at the opposite end of the price and quality scale, Zenith Allegro and smaller Advent. I acquired a pair of each on a lark at a couple of garage sales at about the same time for next to nothing. The dimly viewed Zenith worked perfectly and when disassembled had surprisingly good quality components and was well built. The highly vaunted Advent (also American) on the other hand turned out not only to have rotted foam surrounds on the woofers but was such a piece of under designed underbuilt trash that they are simply not worth any time and effort to repair. Once again, the perception of audiophiles about what things are actually worth compared to what they are priced at on the retail market is very distorted in many cases.