I think it's because nothing has any meaning anymore. Brands used to pride themselves on quality, but then they realized that the listener perceives quality based mostly on price and aesthetics. Even people who know better.

I remember about 30 years ago, my father was shopping for a stereo receiver. The salesman happily let him listen to them all, and he said, "You know, there's two people in this industry. There's the guys with the lab coats and measurement devices, who say that there's no difference in the line output quality between these amplifiers, and there's the guys who smoke a lot of weed and they say they can tell the difference." My dad, a CS professor, didn't really like that description of reality and still wanted to hear each one, of course. Past a certain level of amplifier fidelity, the speakers, their placement, and their wires are responsible for all of the sound quality.

My dad even used to tell a story about how an acoustics professor at his school used to take a car stereo speaker (cheap, think 1962) and he would put it into his own enclosure, and it would sound better than the expensive store-bought speaker. So he was well aware of this.

But, still, he listened to each receiver and considered its sound quality. But I bet he bought mainly on functional features and his perception of the brand.

Unfortunately, in these days, where the brand can be sold randomly, and old quality brands are recycled by formerly generic suppliers, our perception of the brand is way off. So many people choose based on price.

And, yes, they do think we are idiots. Remember when Sennheiser was selling identical headphones for two different prices, and the $300 ones actually had something added to make them sound worse than the $500 ones, which when removed gave you the same sound? Not only did this happen, but people who presumably were happy with their Sennheiser gear were on here defending the practice like any fanboy.

>My dad, a CS professor, didn't really like that description of reality and still wanted to hear each one, of course. Past a certain level of amplifier fidelity, the speakers, their placement, and their wires are responsible for all of the sound quality.

That should really be obvious to anyone knows how amplifiers work. The total distortion of any decent stereo amplifier is minuscule, and the difference between any two decent (or better) amplifiers is really tiny. But speakers, and the environment around them, make an enormous difference in sound.

Even 30 years ago, the real differences between amplifiers ("receivers" really) was the features included, not the distortion level of the amplifier. Also aesthetics: people wanted their stereo systems to look good and for the components to match. The power level was important too: if you were driving 6-feet-tall speakers, you needed a higher-power amp than one for driving bookshelf speakers.