'Come on feel the noise' - isn't Hi-Fi complicated?

[Skywave]

Audiophools: amongst all the rest of the brouhaha, there's one thing I don't understand. After a small fortune has been spent trying to obtain the purest sound possible, do these people then spend a huge fortune on having a specially acoustic chamber built for them to sit in and listen to their music? If not - and an 'ordinary' room is used (albeit it with soft furnishings, carpets, curtains, etc.) - then spending that 'small fortune' seems pointless - even if they can't hear / feel / sense 'the difference' anyway.
Or is it all a simple matter of one up-man-ship and sheer misguided snobbery?

Al.