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Every year, predictions that the fully connected home has almost arrived resound across the country. To hear it told, someday soon, we'll all look back and laugh at how barbarian we were back in the dark ages before we could walk into a room, hit a button, and instantly be swept up in music or movies that originate in a remote closet or basement that never offends the eye with its black-box contents. Why does the optimism continue year after year without blockbuster results? Because it is true. Wholehouse audio/video and home networking are going to explode; it just hasn't happened yet.

It's funny to me that so many people try to convince you that the high end is a relatively insignificant factor in the grand scheme of all things audio. Admittedly, if you put the sales figures of one large, mass-market manufacturer next to those of even several high-end manufacturers combined, the former will dwarf the latter every time. But when has audio ever been about sales figures? I certainly don't have space here to elaborate on everything that high-end audio companies do for the middle and lower ends, both tangibly and intangibly. However, one of those benefits is particularly relevant here: the issue of perception. It's hard to overstate the significance of high-end manufacturers getting into the receiver business. Certainly, high-end manufacturers have raised the receiver bar in terms of performance, the quality of internal componentry, and features, but they've also had a tremendous impact on the way that people look at receivers, legitimizing a form that many people consider to be inherently compromised for the sake of convenience and price.

From the early 1950s through the mid-'60s, almost every doctor, lawyer, and chief audio enthusiast had McIntosh products in their home-entertainment systems. Together with Marantz, McIntosh ruled the American high-end audio market.