Thanks. I find the bank account is diminished long before the returns.
The law of diminshing returns?
Came across this article today, just wanted to share it for your perspectives. https://hometheaterhifi.com/blogs/expensive-dacs-what-exactly-are-you-getting-for-the-money/
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The principle of diminishing return is located in audio between the subjective evaluation of sound as an acoustic experience and the objective value of gear design...The P.D.R. is not about money but about the ratio involved between pure acoustics science and engineering science...It is inevitable principle as inevitable is trade-off principles... It is not then something which concern merely the budget of the poor as someone suggested and is supposed to be of no concern for the goal of audiophile.....
Why is it not clear for all then ? Why so much "audiophile" thought about it as a vulgar money question in no way related to audiophile working methodology ? Because people understand audio through the gear pricing not so much through acoustics experience and controls and psycho-acoustics parameters and controls... Saying that the sky is the limit nevermind the money if we are audiophiles is preposterous claim sorry... This motto, the sky is the limit, nevermind money, comes from marketing conditioning not from audio and acoustics wisdom and experience...
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Enjoyment and also objective learning about basics (acoustics being the most important ) ... Now i learned basics and i enjoy music with a good sound with no squirrel upgrading wheel obsession...Because it is a low cost system , it does not mean that it has no value for audiophile... Any system at any price can reach his optimal working level or not... Thats audiophile goal: any system must reach his optimal working level using audio basics knowledge... Price has nothing to do with audiophile learnings... It is more important to have a dedicated acoustically controlled room anyway than a 100,000 bucks system in the living room ... We live an era where price does not means as much as in the past decades... Thanks to engineerring progress in audio... Buy an Edgar Choueiri DSP system for example if your budget is higher than mine and call it job done... Read Choueiri articles and see his video to understand why... This is not marketing it is a plasma physicist with a job who do acoustics studies as a hobby...
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@ghdprentice +1 Acceptance of the facts that time/effort/knowledge and money will give one better results when assembling a HEA system. Many budget orientated Audiophiles lack knowledge due to the limited time and effort applied to this hobby, claiming "snake oil"(law of diminishing returns) as their mantra. |
As written , @ghdprentice post doesn’t deny that there is an asymptote, but rather that some individuals are willing to spend limitless amounts of money to get every last drop of sonic benefit. Those people are entitled to do that and I am not being critical. However many of us believe that the biggest improvement occurs when one gets out of budget gear and ascends into the low high end. Past that improvement is audible but the value equation becomes less favorable. Whether or not this matters to a given individual is a personal choice |
This kind of article is there just to increase traffic and discussion in the forums. The same guy wrote a 12k$ DAC review recently with the opposite conclusion. Don't buy a 200$dac if you have a high end system... https://hometheaterhifi.com/reviews/dac/emm-labs-ma3i-digital-to-analog-converter-review/ His conclusions: The EMM Labs MA3i D/A Converter is a superb electrical engineering accomplishment. Its standout feature is vanishingly low harmonic distortion. Remember, though, what gets to the speakers is limited by the highest distortion component in the signal chain, including the speakers, for that matter. If you obtain a DAC of this quality, you need to be sure your other components are worthy. And, if your other components are really high-end, don’t buy a $200 DAC. |
I'd suggest that the law of diminishing returns almost always applies but that the breakpoints are highly individual and driven based on how much value is placed on audio (preferences) and resources. If you don't value audio, then spending $2k on a system may be a waste relative to your bluetooth speaker. If you really value audio but have have limited resources, then perhaps you can justify buying a $3k integrated but not $8k in separates. If you are Jeff Bezos and you value audio, no big deal to buy a $90k PC (but you may pass on that audio barrier breaking new $1 billion amp as you'd get more personal utility value out of a another yacht). |
The law of diminishing returns applies to most everything after a certain price point or engineering level. That is not unique to Audio equipment. Thus, rehashing this tired statement feels to me meaningless. Credit to the author of the article who actually in a structured way breaks down why digital to analog conversion is a LOT more than just the DAC chip itself. (Not to mention that some higher-end DACs don't use an off-the-shelf DAC chip at all, but use other D-to-A implementation technologies.) But what does a statement like "A $20,000 DAC doesn’t deliver 20× the objective performance of a $1,000 DAC — physics doesn’t allow that. Shocking, I know." add to the conversation? I think we all understand that a $300k Porsche does not go 10x faster than a $30k Subaru, nor does it cut down to 1/10th the time to get your dinner pick up order or get to the grocery store. What else is new?
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A Ferrari or Porsche that costs 3x more than a base Corvette may not measure a whole lot better on paper but is a very different and more rewarding driving experience to a good driver who knows what they’re doing, which I think is an apt analogy here. The gist of the article is that you pay big $$$ for pricier DACs for relatively small improvements in measurements, but IMO it understates that although the incremental measurement improvements may be small on paper the sonic improvements can be transformative and not small at all. This article leans just a little into the ASR camp to me, and frankly this writer’s reviews are not ones that I rely on if I want to know what something sounds like or if I’d want to pursue it. In short, I think he’s better at measuring equipment than assessing and communicating what it sounds like after having read his reviews for years, but that’s me. |
@bimmerlover I agree "The Law Of Diminishing Returns" has been excessively debated but since its subjective it will never be resolved. Placing a formula($xX) is simplistic and ignorant when regarding an art form of recorded music. That is why I don't believe in this manufactured theory. |
The law of diminishing returns is most certainly a real thing in high-end audio, but at what point does it begin, and at what point does it end? Ask 10 different audiophiles, and you’re subject to get 10 different answers. It’s all so extremely subjective. But, it doesn’t really matter. Most people purchase based solely on their budget, with almost total disregard for the law of diminishing returns LOL!!! Happy listening. |
DACs, turntables (not including carts & phono stages), and cables are perhaps the best subjects for diminishing returns. The "extravagance tier" models employ absurd over-engineering plus gimmicks to justify their cost. These models will certainly sound different to more modest alternatives - some cite "diminishing returns" while implying that sonic differences decrease towards zero as price rises; that’s absolutely not the case. This stuff really sounds different. But does it actually produce better sound as you move up? Or just different sound, that only some will like better? The rate of audiophile disagreements, on forums like this one, heavily implies the latter. At the end of the day, the mastering still dominates - over DACs and turntables - how pleasing we find the resulting sound quality. That’s the #1 source of diminishing returns here. DACs are funny because they started out as a pure engineering challenge (and a very tough one at that), so most DAC chips at their core, even going back decades, are quite well engineered, accurate solutions. It’s up to hifi companies to think up wild Rube-Goldberg-esque solutions to bolt on top of and around that. With turntables it’s all about selling the "gimmick" and then showing off how much you’ve over-engineered for that. Then as audiophiles we endlessly try to rationalize why we like some models over others - whether our reasoning has and basis in reality or not, it gives us something to do :) |
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IMHO the law of diminishing returns applies to those who have limited financial resources to spend on audio gear, while still trying to get the best sound that they can for their audio dollar. For those who have what is essentially endless financial resources, they can afford whatever audio gear they desire, while enjoying this hobby at a level that most of us can only dream about. As always, this is just my subjective opinion and should thus be taken with a grain of sand. 😊
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It is not the Manufacturer or the Sales Support adopted by the Manufacturer that creates the concept of diminishing returns. It is solely the Customer who is responsible for bringing such a condition of not much gain in a performance for a substantial increase in cost for a Product over another Product that offers a little less. his is even more prominent as a condition when a Customer is remaining loyal to a Brand. Investigating alternate Brands or alternate methods to acquire a Product , where there is an intention to acquire a product that offers a particular function within the audio system. Will expose the Purchaser to products more that are capable of being extremely impressive. Even as impressive or surpassing the impression where the option to Purchase is to remain Brand Loyal and upgrade within the Brand. The Vendor has zero control over a Purchasers Pocket Book, but does have their methods to persuade one to seriously consider purchasing a product. In today's market place, and the lack of access to demo' products, it is only when the Purchaser has parted with an amount of monies, that they are able to learn whether they got ' great bang for their buck ' or have created a sale that is a ' pig in a poke '. One thing remains a certainty, the Products being produced could easily be deselected as a Purchase Item, by a customer who expressed their interes. |
The principle (not a law) of diminishing returns apply to everyone at any price level why ? Because this principle emerge from the distance separating subjective and objective acoustical gear evaluation in a room by some specific ears and the objective/subjective qualitative evaluation of the material gear design level in some acoustical and system context... Then it is preposterous to describe this principle as a fate pertaining to low budget perspective versus rich audiophiles... The principle apply to all for any system/room...Ignorance of it come with a price to pay... For sure this principle as a meter and as a measure is relative then not absolute...But it exist for all ...
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@mulveling
In fact every audio maker is using off the shelf DACs and they use the manufacturer’s toolkit to design and load firmware to behave a particular way to control the behavior of the DAC. Some manufacturers will use features of the DAC (e.g. external clocks to the DAC as well), but none of this makes high-end DACs intrinsically better or more expensive. They can’t take advantage of the economies of scale to reduce prices nor do they want to. |
The "law" is just an equation, y = 1/x. It doesn't just apply in some cases or to some people, it applies in all cases. Though subjectivity & opinion can bend your world any way you want, this doesn't change reality. "Diminishing returns" (1/x) applies in a wide variety of applications and natural systems. In the plot of -1*(1/x) below (-1 is just to flip the plot horizontally as people, in this case, are trying to maximize y), the x axis would be cash, the y axis would be "perfect sound quality".
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Great post! I will only add that the psycho-acoustics dimension add to the physical engineering dimension and made it an inescapable dimension of audio .. like the trade-off principle in engineering .. Then those claiming that this principle dont apply to a "high class" of audiophiles whose status is over this principle with no budget limit spoke non sense ...
I create the concept of "minimal acoustical satisfaction threshold" to descrive the state of satisfaction of low cost system/room and "maximal acoustical satisfaction threshold" to describe the state of satisfaction of high cost system/room... In these two cases according to "the principle of diminishing return" there exist an "optimal acoustical satisfaction threshold" ... Snobism has nothing to do with acoustics or design engineering and their trade-off relation in Room constraint...
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Oh, this hobby of ours. I would venture to say that someone with unlimited funds can indulge their fancy for the ultimate in sound reproduction, clarity, reality, sound stage, imaging, etc, etc, regardless of price. For everyone else, it comes down a matter of priorities and trade offs both financial and acoustical. If your room is optimally acoustically treated to begin with, then you’re more likely to maximize the sound quality of your given system. That being said, a resulting perceived upgrade in sound quality may be the result of expectation, confirmation bias or the placebo effect. But, assuming that the improvement is in actuality real and valid, then the question becomes, is it worth it? If your looking for the Holy Grail of musical truth then yes, For others more value oriented, possibly not. At what point, do you say, no more, Basta? |
That’s really only answerable on an individual basis after listening to a given product preferably and optimally in your own system. Fortunately DACs lend themselves well to buying used, which to me is the way to go for the more value oriented with relatively low risk. |
