High-End Audio

You may well have been reading my Sunday Thoughts pieces and assumed that I was no fan of High-End Audio, given I’ve been championing affordable and entry-level kit with a view to attracting a younger and more diverse demographic into the world of good quality home audio. However, nothing could be further from the truth; I absolutely love High-End Audio, much as I love high horology, the world of supercars, and luxury cameras; my pocket is less keen.

Whilst I still maintain that you can get very good sound at home without spunking a fortune, I also think that the high-end offers something to aim towards, something to aspire to, and something that only very few people will ever have the opportunity to own. 

I mentioned high horology (posh watches) and, short of a lottery win, I know that I’m never going to own the Henry Graves Jr. Supercomplication that sold for $24 million. However, that doesn’t stop me from admiring the technology, craftsmanship, and work that goes into producing such a watch, though that particular timepiece also has a good deal of interesting provenance that plays a massive part in its selling price.

But aspiration (obviously) doesn’t always have to lead to ownership. We admire things from afar all the time. I’m unlikely to ever buy a McLaren or a Pagani, but I still gawp at the engineering, the design, and the mentalness of them. Just like someone might drool over an F.P. Journe watch or a Leica M11 Monochrom and never make the purchase, I think high-end HiFi also has the potential to sit in that same rarified space, a world of objects and experiences designed to push technical boundaries, display genuine craftsmanship, and inspire those on the outside looking in on the hobby. It’s kind of back to that idea of getting a more diverse demographic into the hobby, be that those looking to buy their first budget system or those looking to buy a heirloom (if that exists in the audio world) uber-system. 

The best high-end HiFi systems can do just that. They’re ambitious, excessive, impractical for most folk, and often totally stunning. A full (pick your electronics brand of choice) system powering a pair of (insert your dream speakers of choice) might not be something you or I will ever have in our living rooms, but that doesn’t make them irrelevant. Quite the opposite: they push the envelope, set a benchmark, and make us take a look at what’s possible. They can, and should, exist as reference points, as symbols of where things can go when price is no object and innovation is allowed to have free rein.

Aspirational products inspire us not because everyone can own them, but because they make people dream. The trouble is, High-End Audio hasn’t quite nailed this emotional pitch in the way some other luxury sectors have. Supercars have posters on teenagers’ walls, videos of roaring exhaust notes are on social media, whilst owners thrash around Knightsbridge, Top Gear has pieces on them, and they have god-like status for some. High-end watches appear on red carpet wrists and collector auctions. Even designer handbags (not my area of expertise, I must admit) seem to understand the art of creating cultural relevance and cachet.

So why does High-End Audio so often struggle to be seen in the same light?

Some of it, I reckon, comes down to presentation. The audio world can often feel overly technical and, let’s be honest, occasionally a bit dry. When was the last time you saw a piece of HiFi gear truly celebrated for its aesthetic or cultural appeal outside of our niche little world? Most media and presentations at shows tend to focus on specs, measurements, and materials, while other luxury markets focus on heritage, lifestyle, and prestige. We talk about THD, damping factors, and micro-dynamics, whereas others talk about heritage, legacy, rarity, and feelings. And what better way to connect to real feelings than music? Don’t get me wrong, I know from experience there are folk who obsess about the specs and whatnot in other areas of luxury. Case in point: I recently went on a group for Omega watches, having just bought a couple of pieces, and dared to ask for a bit of advice. The responses were full of serial numbers and all the baffling rest. But here we are talking about the folk who have got into the middle market and want to show off their technical knowledge and superiority to the relative newbie  – this doesn’t happen (I guess) in the rarified world of the very wealthy. They talk about different things.  

Imagine if High-End Audio started highlighting its emotional and aspirational aspects. What if flagship kit was presented not only as a precision-engineered tool, but as an object of desire – a piece of design, an artefact of future history?

To be fair, some brands are doing this to a greater or lesser extent. Look at a brand like Aries Cerat (there are others, but they came to mind first). They embody everything I’ve just been banging on about. They are precision-engineered, they are an object of desire for many, and they connect you emotionally to the tunes. They are also mental and the product of a highly focused and obsessed individual who seems oblivious to anything but creating his vision. In short, they kind of represent the Patek Supercomplication in audio form. 

And while we’re talking aspiration – let’s not ignore a piece of the puzzle that the HiFi world seems almost allergic to: brand ambassadors. I don’t know if this is down to cost or what…

You look at a watch advert and who’s in it? David Beckham for Tudor. Brad Pitt for Breitling. Roger Federer for Rolex. Omega managed to attach itself to James Bond and space exploration. It’s not just about celebrity for celebrity’s sake, it’s about creating an emotional connection between a lifestyle, a product, and the person who represents it.

So here’s the question: why isn’t High-End Audio doing the same?

We know that Professor Brian Cox has a good HiFi system and is a self-professed (pun intended) music obsessive. He’s articulate, cultured, widely respected, and beloved across multiple generations. Why isn’t he fronting a high-end HiFi brand? Why isn’t a brand he uses throwing money at him to represent their brand? Perhaps someone from outside the usual middle-aged audiophile cliché, an artist, a chef, a designer, a film director, who genuinely values excellence in audio?

This industry is full of brilliant, passionate people. But from the outside, it can seem a bit faceless. That’s a problem if you want to be seen as aspirational. People connect with people. They don’t necessarily connect with a ±0.0003% distortion rating… or whatever measurement figure you want to highlight.

Imagine if Brand X or Brand Y had Idris Elba talking about the emotional power of music and how good sound can change the way we feel. Or if Brand Z had someone like Liam Neeson talking about fidelity, soundscapes, and the emotional feeling he gets from a great record heard on great gear. It could completely change how the public perceives the whole industry. I loved the way that PMC had Steven Wilson talking and championing their exceptional Dolby Atmos system a couple of years ago at Munich, and I think The High End Society having a famous brand ambassador at their shows is fab. 

Now, a quick but important distinction: there’s a big difference between gear that’s expensive and gear that’s truly high-end.

It’s easy to slap a five-figure price tag on something and call it “luxury”…in ANY sector, but true high-end audio goes beyond pricing. It’s about innovation, materials, craftsmanship, and sometimes even sheer bloody-mindedness – see Aries Cerat and others. It’s the difference between a watch that costs £20,000 because it has a logo on it, and one that costs £20,000 because it took 400 hours to hand-finish the movement and includes a complication no one else has even attempted – I’m aware these prices are way lower than the reality, but you get my point. 

In audio, there are brands that charge high prices because they can, and others that charge high prices because they must, given the level of R&D, precision engineering, or innovation involved. We need to be eyes-wide-open about this. There’s this phenomenon in every luxury area, but High-End Audio sometimes leaves itself open to criticism because it doesn’t always communicate why something costs what it does.

The industry would do well to tell those stories more often: about the obsessiveness of a designer who spent five years developing a new DAC architecture (it happens a lot), or the atelier in Italy making speaker enclosures from solid gold using aerospace techniques – I’m making this up, but you get the idea. That’s the kind of storytelling that elevates a product beyond being just “expensive kit” and into the realm of desirability.

However, for all the money that flows through the High-End Audio world, and all the big-ticket items we see at the big shows, very little of it translates into collectability in the same way it does for watches, supercars, or rare guitars…or handbags (I still don’t get the fascination with the latter). You don’t see many auctions of classic valve amps going for astronomical sums. A 1990s Krell, no matter how revered in its time, won’t fetch anywhere near what an early Richard Mille or a Porsche 964 Turbo might. Even limited editions rarely become financial investments in the way watches or cars do.

Why is that?

It might be that the technology turnover in HiFi moves too fast. Products that were “the best ever” ten years ago (or even quicker) can be seen as obsolete today. There’s churn of kit and the desire to forever keep upgrading. It might also be the perception that audio is for listening, not owning, and once better sound becomes available, the older kit loses its magic. There’s also the question of physical permanence. A luxury watch can be worn and passed down, a car restored, driven, and displayed, but a pair of 100kg loudspeakers? Less so. I know that Stratton Acoustics had a specific goal of creating loudspeakers that you could buy once and then pass down through the generations, and that was a big part of my loving that brand’s values. 

Then there’s the resale market, which in many ways undermines the sense of prestige. Try reselling a £50,000 amplifier and see how close you get to retail. That alone tells you that, rightly or wrongly, the audio world hasn’t fully cracked the aspirational code.

Another reason HiFi struggles to match its luxury counterparts may lie in how it’s presented in retail. Step into a high-end watch boutique or luxury car showroom, and you’re immersed in a carefully curated (I still hate that word, but I’m stuck as to what other word to use) experience. There’s theatre, lighting, posh scent, service, and more often than not, champagne… it feels rarified. By contrast, some (but not all) HiFi shops still feel more like man caves than temples of luxury. To be fair, there are some retailers getting it very right, and we should celebrate them.

I’ve mentioned it earlier, but let’s talk representation. Aspirational brands often understand the power of image. Who’s shown in the marketing? Who’s holding the product? Who is being invited to want it? If we want HiFi to have a real place in the wider cultural imagination, the way luxury watches and cars do, then perhaps it’s time to widen their appeal a bit.

Look at what Devon Turnbull has achieved. He’s putting out pretty mental, but heritage kind of kit and celebrities and others are lapping it up. His recent collaboration with Klipsch and their OJAS speakers have pretty much sold out – I can’t even get a pair to review, though I dearly want to…just so I can have experienced them at home.

None of this article is meant to bash High-End Audio. Quite the opposite. I LOVE high-end audio, in the way you love a thing that’s beautiful and maddening and brilliant and mental. I love that we live in a world where someone can build a turntable the size of a family car (I’m exaggerating, but not much) just because they can. I love that a massive pair of horns still inspires folk. I love that chasing the last fraction of sonic perfection still matters to some people.

But if High-End Audio is to be truly aspirational in the wider cultural sense, it has some catching up to do. The potential is there. The quality, the innovation, the beauty, it’s all there. We just need to stop thinking of it purely as a tool for reproduction and start embracing it as an object of imagination and desire – years ago, I called this kind of high-end audio (and more affordable kit) Machines For Joy, and I still hold that to be a truth. 

And maybe, just maybe, one day, that poster on the wall next to the Ferrari might be a beautiful bit of luxury HiFi with some hyper-celebrity fawning over it.

Stuart Smith

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