If you want to see what the future holds for the hobby, have to pay attention to the younger generation of audiophiles. They are the ones that will define the future trends. The baby boomers are/will get out of the game for one reason or another but the youngsters have their whole decades ahead of them.
So I watched with great interest what the "young minds" think of cables today. In watching the video, of course I saw myself and my own audiophile buddies some 30 years ago. I spent countless hours and many years with my friends listening to "cables", "gear" and all sorts of "tweaks" for the system.
At that time, we were all very much into high end cables as an integral part of the system. The hype created all through the 1990's worked beautifully then.
So in the video,
It was fascinating but not surprising as to the conclusion. The younger audiophiles 18-40 have much "fresher" ears than the 45-80 yr old crowd.
But it was the "philosophy" of "value" and what they consider a priority of building a system that should make the cable manufacturers realize that the days of ultra-expensive cables are numbered once the baby boomers are out of the game.
https://youtu.be/HJGw8zwx-6g