The record player isn’t in the picture. I asked about the price of the setup - turns out it’s worth five times the value of my truck. The vacuum tubes there are from the 1940s.
I love my job - I get to meet so many interesting people. Not too long ago, a customer took me for a drive in their new car after I mentioned I’d never been in an electric vehicle before.
And if you look at the real, measurable data, most "normal" systems offer at least equal or even better specs.
HiFi is 110% hype. What they define as "smoother" or "more natural" sound is actually a quality loss.
It's often based on "that's how they sounded when I was young and heard my first record, and not as harsh and crude like they sound on a modern amp". All while forgetting that their sound setup back then was cheap, crappy, and made a massacre of the sound waves on any point between record and speaker.