Some gentle observations.
I recently decided to spent a lot of money to upgrade from an already good Marantz AV7005 pre-processor that handled several inputs and feeding into a bi-amped set of main speakers plus centre, surround and subwoofers when needed. I decided on the upgrade with some trepidation but could hear worthwhile improvements in the ~$10k replacement. I also wanted to replace the Squeezebox Touch and eliminate one more device from my too large set of equipment - this in favour of an apparently good gapless, high resolution music player built in.
it has not been a lot of fun. Certainly there is an underlying quality benefit but the annoyances are really accumulating.
What do I like? Firstly I am passionate about music. I bought my first pieces of hifi equipment while at school and first year of university. I bought import versions of what we now call progressive rock because English and German pressings were better than the Australian ones at the time. For one thing the vinyl was heavier duty and therefore not as prone to warping. The grooves were cleaner, with less residue to be removed. In the mid 1970s this was not at all the done thing but I did enjoy listening to the most unpopular music collection that any of my friends had. In the past 10 years I have transferred my vinyl (much of which is not available in any other format) to digital lossless format and just under 1200 CDs. Playing them through a succession of front end players but mostly through Squeezebox versions.
I also love my films. Since it has been possible to emulate a good cinema at home, I have greatly enjoyed revisiting old favourites and broadening my tastes.
I listen to more music and watch more movies than I ever have and do so at my convenience and at higher quality than any time in the past. I have a combination of physical media and streaming services that I reluctantly subscribed to but get some good value from - mainly when investigating a new genre that I would not go out and buy to see/hear.
So here are a few of the issues I have found with the "high end" of the industry. It seems to me that there are a lot of unexamined assumptions and associated behaviours that are somewhat unhelpful. Here is my take on them.
Uncompromising usually means that you just have to accept the paradigm which the manufacturer thinks is the right one.
Stereo only is the gold standard and anything else is a toy and quality is therefore a non-issue. Taken one step further this means that any multi-channel listening needs to be "enhanced" with some spectacular intervention that pretends that the original stereo recording can be played through surround channels. It seems to be assumed that any recording that plays back as multi channel is also a gimmick (or perhaps not worth considering as a mainstream option) and only suited to playback from a physical disc. What is forgotten most frequently is that multi channel is both music and sound. Sound for movie playback. The final assumption embedded in the industry is that you would choose to have a stereo system for music and a separate movie system (each in a purpose built room) dedicated to one purpose each. If you want something to do the lot then you will be fine with low quality.
Playing media is a gen-y thing and therefore songs from an iPhone are what matter. This is an industry wide thing and resulted in the ridiculous idea that each track on an album is a discrete "song" that requires a gap between it an the next/previous. Also there needs to be a large number of options for how you transition from one track to another and the greatest abomination of all - shuffle. How anyone could believe that the first and second movements of a symphony or live performance should have an artificially inserted gap when it was never performed that way is beyond comprehension. Media servers, in general, assume that you want fancy graphics, have no metadata (downloaded??) and that you are playing back on a PC or a phone. Final assumption seems to be that you have a few dozen albums or movies.
Good hardware manufacturers seem to stumble when they get into software. I have seen highly reputable manufacturers of quality hifi release software that is an embarrassment. Gapped playback an appalling usability are the most common failings.
You want to buy into a manufacturer's ecosystem. Taking a marketing cue from Apple and building on long standing beliefs that you need to stick with a single brand to ensure compatibility and enhanced functionality. It is certainly an easier buying decision to choose from one brand and a lot of the time it results in a system that looks good and performs well. The real problem is that no manufacturer seems to have its act together in all areas that matter to me. I think that my power amplifiers are as good as I can get without paying the price of a car and the same with the speakers I have. Nothing wrong with my turntable or my disc player. The television is also very good. That leaves the music player and pre-processor that I am not happy with - and where I have found the most difficulty. I am not seeing anyone get this right yet. Having said that I have not seen everything that is available. I do see that you can get a lot of what I want by having some custom built (well almost) equipment.
Feature-itis. Especially with music players, control software and processors the number of marginally useful features is astounding. This seems to stem from defacto standards that are targeted at consumer electronics (refer again to shuffle, fade and "surround modes"). What is needed is properly designed and standard interfaces that are appropriate for listening to hifi music and watching movies without frills but doing it well. Few mainstream manufacturers are doing that and the same applies to the high end ones. It is third parties (Auralic, Roon etc) that are leading the charge and therefore the market is fragmented and anything but standard. While on standards, AirPlay entrenches much of what is bad about commercial products in hifi. It might work relatively easily but its limitations cause a series of further compromises that eventually means you are likely to bypass it altogether and add another device that delivers higher quality.
So I suppose that I am suggesting that high end manufacturers are not well positioned to build a comprehensive "solution" to my needs. The challenges of software development and building in functionality that is not traditional business are hard to manage in a traditional company. This appears to be at the heart of what I would regard as poor decision making to adopt standards such as stock DLNA gapped playback and AirPlay interfaces.
So some real life examples of how this plays out. First you have the phone apps. Look at the trouble Auralic has had with getting its inhouse Lightning DS app to work. Look at how the underlying operating systems (Linux) for av pre-processors cause compatibility problems, security issues and stability trouble. I will not identify any specific brand because it is a near universal problem. Then you see what happens when traditional companies get you to sign up to an account to deliver "value added" services and find that a security breach compromises your banking, home network and more. Let alone causing you to spend far too long dealing with blocked e-mail and failed firmware upgrades. Lets mention Oppo and their decisions to change their firmware to remove he ability to play back certain file formats at the request of media companies. The first thing may people knew about losing the ability to play formats was when they tried to play them
and it failed. The "upgrade" was not reversible and threfore you were stuck with it.
While we are at it there is the collusion with media companies to enforce region codes. How coudl it possibly be reasonable to prevent you playing a disc that you have purchased in good faith just because it has an artificial restriction on it (albeit you can bypass it reasonably easily with an add-on piece of electronics). You buy these things with the understanding that you can use it to do what the product is supposed to do and then have the right taken away from you by decisions made by the company without consultation.
I suppose that is enough for a Sunday rant.