Myles
Don't go there ... In video Performance increase is in synch with price decrease ..Better performance for less price year in and out is the norm ... The level of performance the Lumis brings in its field would have cost a quarter of a million 10 years ago ( I am not exaggerating.. Quad Stack of a 25 K CRT PJ + Processor for about $125K such as the Faroudja Line Quadrupler, Matrix Switcher etc for another 100 K or most likely more ) ... It is now $35 K .. MSRP ... and yes .. Video pictures in the Home are routinely superior to what we see in the Theaters ...movies where the exit signs all by themselves ruin all the contrast ...
In High End Audio? The reverse, the complete opposite ... 10 years ago, 30 K amps were seen as the exception ... Right now EVERY manufacturer aims at >100 K speaker , >100 K amps and at least half that price for a preamp using circuitry that were designed half a century ago ... Several cables happily hover around $30K ..What we get are too often dubious claims that cannot be objectively and even subjectively validated ... So ... You do the math..
Frantz
P.S. Mike L posted this while I was writing my reply ...
Can we expect this in Audio .. Wait for performance to increase toward a certain (low) price point ? For example I'll wait until Wico Audio comes up with a 10 K speaker with the performance of its Y-2?
Frantz,
i think that things are not simple when speaking about performance for the dollar trends in home theatre or 2-channel music.
ultimately one's perspective on these issues relates to source software.
in home theatre it took progression to a 1080p source format that hollywood embraced for distribution before the delivery products could be developed to optimize them. we are only 4 years into that process.
Lps and tapes have been around for many years containing state-of-the-art information and mostly delivery systems at the state of the art have been around for 20-30 years which are still relevant at the highest levels of performance.
my Rockport is a 15 year old product which continues to equal or surpass today's best alternatives. my Studer is 30 years old and still is at the pinacle of performance. there are 10 year old speakers and amps which rival todays best. and it's not just at the highest price points where that happens in 2-channel. i have a Garrard 301 tt (50 years old) and a Technics (30 years old) that compete in performance at the highest levels.
in digital it's not quite the same; but honestly my Marantz SA-1 from 2000 would still hold it's own on SACD with any digital of today....the differences would be very difficult to hear for the typical listener.
in home theatre today's Blue Ray dics clearly humble any previous consumer format.
added note; in the 90's there were over $100k components too, maybe not as many as now but they were out there. i don't think they had any more or less relevance today as they had then. there were a few that actually delivered on the extra performace then as now. mostly they did not.