Not necessarily. In fact, we are in a golden age of well-engineered and less expensive devices, from DACs to amplifiers to headphones and IEMs. Good speakers tend to be a bit pricier simply due to the masses needed to damp out vibration modes, larger magnets, and so on, but there are fantastic speakers at relatively low prices as well.
Sites like Audio Science Review, Erin’s Audio Corner, and Archimago do varying levels of testing of audio components and discuss their relative merits. A key takeaway from these sites is that price does not necessarily correlate with state-of-the-art audio reproduction components.
In fact, Archimago even performed a listening test with worldwide volunteers to try to discern if those listeners could discern a $10 Apple USB-C DAC dongle from $3000 and $20000 DACs. It turns out a few could with some statistical reliability but overall the results pointed to little difference between the devices, even when correlated with expensive reproduction chains and other factors like age and background.
So, beware of claims of “highly discerning systems” and pooh-poohing of less expensive electronics. It’s just not true.
