Not only butt-ugly, but I have the feeling I know many $2K systems that could woop its ass.

"Bauhaus" style, supposedly. But imo they look like something out of a budget hot-rod wannabe from southern Montana rather than the "masterpiece" of a German audio house. Combine Wolf Von Langa with Thomas Mayer and a DAC of your choice. Bauhaus is modern with the touch of controlled color plus clean round lines. Nordic but using matte clean white and not as much wood. This is a style possible with WVL and Thomas Mayer, the latter of both being a well-known audio artisan. You'll end up with a far better looking, far better sounding system for less (WVL SON: $17,000, Vinylsavor 6CB5A Dual Chassis: $9,000, for DAC/Preamp duties say, assign a Sonnet Morpheus ($4,000), and for cables let's do a loom of Mad Scientist Audio mixed with Cerious Technologies all sourced from a JCAT server ($6000 all in all) for a grand total of $36,000. About $14,000 cheaper and capable of debuting in the reference. Could be far cheaper, and still sound better especially if you go DIY, but this proves that its still far cheaper to buy reference components to make a Bauhaus-looking audio room that buy that system.