Law of Accelerated Returns

@onhwy61

Expensive systems in well designed listening room do scale type things better. They can go louder, sound bigger, thunder in the bass and shimmer the highs. But does that really correlate with listening to music better? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

From the extreme high end systems I have heard, they do a lot more things better than the things you mention.

The most recent I heard was a pair of Estalon Forsa, driven by Pass labs, and besides the things you mentioned, there is an overall effortlessness that most speakers at this price and quality range exhibit, that goes beyond any specific one attribute.

Yes, they produced a realistic scale soundstage of an orchestra as if I was sitting 10 rows back, but they also were able to produce an intimate singer/guitarist performance as if I was I was sitting in the original room with the performer. I could even tell they when they were standing, or sitting on a stool.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

And of course it is "Sometimes yes, sometimes no". Not every high priced speaker is equal, not every high end speaker works well in a particular room, or with all equipment.

@mapman …

”It’s true the most important ingredient is caring, not money.”

To a point, but caring and money trump either individually. Let me care and choose and implement state of the art equipment and that trumps just one or the other.

The "law of diminishing returns" is overplayed to death, usually promoted by guys who:

• have upgraded poorly
• have a significant system imbalance or underlying issue which precludes high performance
• put a system together by reviews and "deals" instead of by ears
• have a vendetta against expensive gear and people who pursue it
• have never experienced a what a truly amazing state-of-the-art system can do

I like "the law of accelerated returns"! It can certainly happen when some new component, approach, or an identified weak link helps you bust out of a performance plateau.

@mulveling 

+ 1

@simonmoon, I fully agree.

I have limited experience with certain classes of components.  I've never heard a $15,000 phono cartridge, $200,000+ turntables, $150,000+ loudspeakers or for that matter really expensive cables.  The bulk of my listening to systems that are more expensive than mine are comprised of $10k to 30k components.

I am also of the opinion that most of the musical differences between systems are subtle.  The difference between a table radio and a decent $5,000 system is dramatic.  The difference between the $5,000 system and a $50,000 system is subtle.  There are clear sonic differences, but I maintain that from a musical perspective they are overwhelmingly subtle.  Maybe as audiophiles we obsess over these small differences?  There's a whole school of thought about the narcissism or tyranny of stressing subtle differences.  I end with the following quote:

consumer culture has been seen as predicated on the narcissism of small differences to achieve a superficial sense of one's own uniqueness, an ersatz sense of otherness which is only a mask for an underlying uniformity and sameness.