Oh, I find it fascinating how the audio gear industry has taught the consumers on how much money you are supposed to spend to have audio experience at certain level. Pay attention on audiophile arguments, they will talk in terms of money(i.e. 150$ headphones vs 500$ headphones) when talking about audio quality. I always find the audiophile market to be borderline fraud. They sell CD demagnetisers, ceramic cable lifte…
I always find the audiophile market to be borderline
fraud. They sell CD demagnetisers, ceramic cable lifters
and all sorts of items that don't make any sense whatsoever.
The good news is that many, if not most audiophiles do as well. There are a lot of objectivity-minded audiophiles who reject that snake oil stuff with a passion.
The fact is that basic audio reproduction -- which is essentially just signal reproduction -- is engineering, not art, and has been pretty much worked out for decades. We know what sounds good and we know how to make it happen. Long story short: reproducing the signal as accurately as possible, with a slight shift to emphasize bass frequencies (Google "Harman Curve") is what sounds good. Floyd Toole and Sean Olive are names to research if you want to know more.
As an example of grass-roots efforts in support of objective audiophile-dom, one example would be this guy's site, full of detailed measurements of various gear: http://audiosciencereview.com
The perception of audiophiles has become a bit wacky over the years. Essentially, in the 70s/80s/90s, the stereo magazines became dependent on advertising from snake oil purveyors, and therefore weren't really free to decry that stuff. And then the media tends to focus on the really wacky fraud crap like CD demagnetizers and the like. That stuff exists, but that is the lunatic fringe and the rest of us laugh at it.