[daniel]

I am new to your forum, but I am not new to high end audio. With two kids in middle school, I'll have to wait to upgrade for a while. My favorite system is now long gone -- my wife was intimidated by the speakers. I owned a pair of magnepan 1.5s (too tall), adcom 60 watt amp and an adcom preamp tuner. I also had a sony cd player. The little amp drove the speakers just fine. I would pull them out from the wall and they sounded great. I teach at the grad school level, and if I ask my students about high end speakers, they usually just stare at me. They all own ipods and do most of their listening on cheap headphones. Very few have heard a good system. I used to debate friends about planar v. box, or ribbon v. electrostatic. There were a ton of smaller stores but lots of speaker makers. I could spend an afternoon with a friend who owned reference KEFs or B&W 8 series, and later listen to Martin Logan. I wish there was a way that the high end industry could jump start interest. But as long as they listen to music through their phones, high end faces troubled times.