Comment Re:Not all audiphiles are like this (Score 1) 418
Speakers, listening room and good quality recordings are by far the most important parts. Everything else is irrelevant as long as it meets some very basic performance parameters, which basically everything these days does. It's literally a question of differences that can only be measured on very sensitive measuring equipment, and is completely inaudible to the human ear, even under ideal conditions.
Ironically, it is often exotically-constructed expensive audiophile products that fail to adhere to basic performance parameters, such as Ayre's idiotic no-feedback amplifiers.
With speakers, there are definite diminishing returns once you get beyond a couple thousand dollars for 99,9% of use cases. For recordings, well-mastered CD-quality audio is all you'll ever need (or surround mixes of equivalent quality, of course). But when it comes to acoustic treatment of the listening room, there is a hell of a lot you can do. Acoustics are so hard to get completely right.