Frantz,
I think there are 2 main points in play. One is based on psychology and the other one is based on economics.
First, on the psychological front, we are dealing with subjective experiences. Because audio is partly subjective , there are as many audio brands as there are religions in the world. (And if you think it's all objective, what the heck are you doing spending precious hours of your life posting on this site?!?!!) No one - and I mean no one has been able to figure out what goes on inside someone else's head in the way they experience things. So the subjective stuff is not quantifiable. Just a fact of reality that we can't measure everything. As a result, it is impossible to compare 2 persons' levels of joy derived from listening to music on more and less expensive systems.
Now the economics: If you accept, that audio has a subjective element , and people perceive differences in their analog gear, such as more bass, more detail, quieter background, or more fireworks, many are willing to pay for that extra performance. For someone the quieter background is worth $2K, based on their personal situation. While for another individual with the financial means, the extra fireworks are worth $100K.
Caeasar
Your tone of post is rather surprising. Please refrain from such in the future, we try to be polite in this forum and I don’t take it nicely when I am subject to ad hominem attacks. Discussion requires mutual respect I am extending mine toward you do try the same. Rather than asking in an impolite fashion (“What the heck…”) address to the best of your abilities my post and/or logic.
You take opinions and pronounce them as definite truths. They aren’t. For example your point that subjective “stuff” can’t be measured is wrong. Our degree of satisfaction (or not) to a stimulus can be measured and is regularly measured. It can also be inferred with satisfactory results. Subjective can be measured. There is no doubt that there is a hierarchy of performance in the High End and all subjectivity aside the clues of what we like are coming out from the works of companies as diverse as Harman or Bang Olufsen (yes) and researchers. There are things that we audiophile almost universally value, among these smoothness of frequency response.. Once we introduce our biases however our responses tend to become less reliable …
That we perceive differently is a truism but we perceive the same things in ways that allows us to recognize them with consistency. When we hear a trumpet we all know what it is. We may individually like the sound of trumpet or not but most humans and that include audiophiles hear a trumpet not a flute .. Same with a piano, we, after some training will recognize a Bosendorfer from a Steinway and an upright from a grand concert. Call it training, call it education (your own terms by the way) ... If a system is accurate it reproduces the differences in way we can interpret and appreciate, our response to such accuracy may be varied and if someone like his gear to make a Bosendorfer sound like a Steinway, i am not sure that person should call it High End Audio and that person may not need 100K to do that, a simple EQ available online will do it nicely for him/her. But that wasn't your point was it? You meant that our response to gear is subjective, true but there is an objective reality in Audio, the goal of Audio after all is to reproduce as it was captured or constructed and there again we educate ourselves to somewhat abide to it ... we have made sure to remove tone control on most High End Audio stuff unless you call cables tone control, they are a poor (sorry poor but expensive) substitute... And that objective reality is measurable; that we haven't completely measured it doesn't change much about the fact that anything that exists is measurable. The subjective stuff is quantifiable... You don't change your subjective views every second and even if you did it would be possible to measure the frequency of your liking or disliking physical reality = measurability ... So let’s not postulate let’s try to prove our points with facts…
Now for the economics, I have no qualms with someone spending is money any way he/she judges fit.. Their prerogative, their money. A question is however asked on an Internet Discussion board as to the level that implies SOTA to a money amount term and I objected to the formulation which in my opinion equated SOTA to price paid… Can you disprove my point of view? With solid facts and correct argumentation? If yes I am all ears and eyes... If this post was your attempt, I am not sure it does acquit itself of the purpose…