Mid-Fi owners understand that swapping out anything to go to the next level means that they will be either giving up reliability or money for largely unhearable results."
There's a lot going on in this thought. Let's take it apart. It'll be helpful on our journey to building a mid-level system.
First, let's change the lexicon: Mid-Fi is a judgment, Mid-Level is a category.
I prefer categories to judgments.
There is no doubt that Mid-Level systems are the juiciest part of the price/performance curve relative to their more expensive counterparts. Mid-Level systems give 80% of the performance for a lot less money. It's the Law of Diminishing Returns. Increased input no longer provides linear output benefits.
Going to a higher level can often marginalize reliability, but not in the way you might think. High-Level products are no more prone to breaking than Mid-Level. No, this is reliability of a different nature. Performance.
Mid-Level performance can be counted on to a greater extent than edge products, though their downside is pasteurization—smaller risks offer fewer gains. Most music sounds good on Mid-Level systems. Rarely does it sound fabulous. More often than not, Mid-Level systems tend to be less resolving: poor to good recordings sound fine, exceptional sounds better, few drop jaws. You can count on these systems to provide reliable, consistent results.
Contrast that to rarified High-Level systems whose double-edged performance accentuates the good as well as the bad.
High-Level systems are noticeably better than Mid-Level, but the juiciest center cut is Mid-Level.
