sandm,
I miss the golden years of simple two-channel home audio. Like an old school analog dial with a heavy flywheel. I recently got an FM/AM/XM home tuner for whole house and you can tune only as fast as the tuner responds. The menu and functionality is retarted. I actually had to read the manual to figure out how to enter the presets. Bottom line, even though it's from a prestigious brand, it's still a POS.
Speaker value I can definitely see and the good ones for home have gotten super expensive.
A lot of the other esoteric stuff is just placebo effect. And many will cling to things well past their expiration date.
Class D well done has no audible artifacts in the context of what we do in boats or cars. It would be crazy to be listening to an esoteric SACD with D to A conversion talking about how you hear this or that from a top analog switching D amplifier. Kind of the pot calling the kettle black. But again, there are different levels of everything. The difference maker for Class D was the more recent advent of super high speed microprocessors and transistors that keep the switching frequency perhaps 20 times what our audible bandwidth is. It's the same for the evolution of fullrange Class H where the power supply has to track the audio signal super fast. That would have artifacts if the devices were slower. Speed has changed both topologies.

David