Today, we can consider three groups of "audio" home equipment.
The easy music listening experience.
Think about portable Bluetooth speakers, mini integrated hi-fi systems, headphones. The ambition of most of these systems is to reproduce a "decent" level of audio quality, and to put upfront other advantages like portability and over the air music streaming.
The A/V systems.
They are aimed at film, tv, rather than pure music experience. By multiplying the loudspeakers (we are at 7 mostly now…) and the sound processing standards (diverse Dolby flavors outdating the previous ones at a fast pace…), they diverge more and more from an expressive musical experience.
The contemporary high-end or esoteric high-fidelity
On the contrary of the above, we are now in a niche market, of small production actors that do only focus on musical reproduction. And in their respective philosophies, they focus on a high-end musical reproduction experience. The finishing, the attention to detail, the ample sizes… nothing is left over, even in the cable specifications. It is no surprise with these pretentions that the budget to allocate to this gear is rapidly sky rocketting. Audiophile, as today standards, will quickly dry many pockets.
This being said, we at Vintage Note, took an other path. We want quality, we want good looks, appropriate size. We want our system to last, to be sustainable. We want a smile on our faces when we sit and listen to a fantastic recording. But we don't necessary want to consider a mortgage to buy a nice system… and even better: we want to share that joy with you, by picking the best, verified vintage hi-fi we can get for reasonable money.