The law of diminishing returns applies to audio gear the same as anything else. The notion of accelerated returns is just more audiophile blabbing by reviewers. If you don't think diminishing returns applies to this first world hobby then you haven't the slightest idea what diminishing returns means.
Law of Accelerated Returns
I think back over the many decades of pursuing high end audio and I realize some of the most inspirational were listening to state of the art systems. Systems I could never dream of affording. I occasionally would get up early and drive the two hours to Phoenix in hopes of finding no one listening to the state of the art system in “the big room” at one of the four or five high end audio stores there in the early ‘90’s.
One such time I was able to spend over an hour with the most amazing system I have ever heard: Wilson WAAM BAMM (or something like that… all Rowland electronics, Transparent interconnects). The system cost about over $.5 million… now, over a million… although I am sure it is even better (I can’t imagine how)..
But listening to that system was so mind blowing… so much better than anything I could conceive of, it just completely changed my expectation of what a system could be. It was orders of magnitude better than anything I had heard.
Interestingly, as impressed as I was… I did not want “that” sound, as much as I appreciated it. It still expanded my horizon as to what is possible. That is really important, as it is really easy to make judgments on what you have heard and not realize the possibilities… like never having left the small town in Kansas (no offense).
I keep reading these posts about diminishing returns. That isn’t the way it works. I recently read an article by Robert Harley in The Absolute Sound called the Law of Accelerated Returns that captures the concept perfectly. March 2022 issue. The possibilities in high end audio is incredible. Everyone interested in it in any way deserves to hear what is possible. It is mind expanding.
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And to clarify the issue, the principle is actually called the law of diminishing *marginal* returns. This concept is rather more nuanced than perhaps people realize. Robert Harley came close to getting it correct in the passage I quoted from 2014. (This despite him then rejecting it in audio with some magic logic.) |
@mapman 1+++! That is essence is the problem. Very few systems including the ultra expensive ones can produce a SOTA performance. They can be VERY impressive compared to the usual and they can have very balanced tonality and excellent timbre but they do not image at the level available on many recordings. Many think they have a great image because they hear the guitar over there and the bass in the middle and a cymbal to the left. They can even tell that the cymbal is behind the other instruments thinking they have "3D' imaging. Performing at this level is not all that difficult and can be achieved by pretty much any serious audiophile as they have heard other systems perform at this level and know what they should be looking for. Imaging the third dimension means placing an image in space that has location and depth/size. Imagine you can walk around the image of that trumpet or piano, the third dimension is not the size of the venue it is producing instruments and voices with depth. The instrument and voice have 3 dimensions. IMHE this is the hardest characteristic to reproduce. Energy created by the room and reflections blur out the third dimension. Channels that have different amplitude and impulse patterns also blur out the third dimension. These three problems compromise at least 90% of the systems out there. Some speaker/rooms will never be able to perform at this level. Others can but are not adjusted correctly. Only by luck can you get this out of the box and only the very misinformed are going to get there by placing little discs next the their interconnects. Do you have to spend a lot of money? Depends what you think a lot of money is. I think you can get there at a lower volume for maybe $50K. The full Monty takes at least $100K for a system with a turntable. Many are spending $250K just for speakers. The most reliable way to get there is with someone who has a lot of measurement equipment and knows what they are doing. As I have said before, it is exactly the same as video projectors. No projector will project colors correctly out of the box. It has to be calibrated and requires a lot of knowledge and expensive equipment. Some projectors, like the one I just bought, will never get it right because they can not do black. You only get shades of gray out of them. Live and learn. |
I think what he's saying is that the sonic differences are subtle. To the average person on the street spending $5,000 dollars on a stereo is quite extravagant. To spend 10x or even 100x that amount is nearly incomprehensible. I will never say that you can't get better sound by spending more money, nor do I begrudge anybody so inclined. I just think the concept of accelerated returns in audio reproduction is false. I find it interesting that nobody has offered actual examples of it happening. |
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