Music kit has become a LOT more polarised, with the majority of listeners now using headphones or “lifestyle” systems, typically with “wife friendly” poxy little speakers.
In the area of what I’d consider genuine stereo systems, they’ve gone much more upmarket, partly to avoid competing with lifestyle and partly because those of us left with an interest tend to have deeper pickets and can afford better systems.
As mentioned, groups like Linn, Quad, Naim, Wilson Benesch, Meridian still at least operate from the UK, with some of them out sourcing to China (e.g. Quad), and thankfully many not (e.g. Linn, Naim, Meridian).
Back in my 20s, all of my friends and I had decent entry level systems. Nowadays, and most of them still have those systems, but typically dethroned into spare bedrooms, studies and similar. Such a shame.
Me, I now have a composite system to make everyone happy.
Speakers are reasonably big Impulse Ta’us, a 3 way horn loaded speaker weighing roughly 65kg each. Imposing they might be, but they also look good with a real wood front baffle and are too heavy to knocked over by a small child. Amp is a nice and simple Quad current dumping unit. Pre-amp is a Meridian processor, capable of dealing with every format with the exclusion of the latest Dolby Atmos and similar. I normally run it in stereo. Also includes digital room correction capability, which certainly does get used. The primary music source is a Roon server, though for background listening for the missus, I have an Amazon Alexa also plugged in (audio quality isn’t great, but hey, I don’t listen to the Alexa and it was dirt cheap). Movies also go into the Meridian from a BD player and a Roku streaming player.
The implications are that once setup, it’s simple enough that my son could use it from the age of 5 and even the missus can use it (i.e. select the right input on the amp with one button, then tell Alexa what to play). Also happens to sound “pretty good”.
