Law of Accelerated Returns

Sure, SOME of it can be due to an increased appreciation of subtleties, cultivated over time in this hobby. But also, we each have completely custom systems with complex electrical, acoustical, and mechanical interactions. This makes for LOTS of potential performance bottlenecks. If you upgrade poorly, you will not properly address these bottlenecks, and you may exclaim "diminishing marginal returns!". If you do this for a while and then finally address the most significant issue, you may have a revelatory experience and exclaim "ACCELERATED returns!". There’s truth to both sides. But like I said before, I feel the hand of "diminished returns" is overplayed online - so what are we supposed to do, give up and try to force enjoyment of diminished system performance? That's too lazy and passive for how I prefer to approach this hobby. 

The "diminishing marginal utility" law is Economics 101, where everything is grossly oversimplified so that it can work nicely with infantile mathematical models. The real world is much more nuanced and complex than that.

If you have something like this at home you can  get that 3d sound. What passes for "high end" here not so much. 

https://www.genelec.com/-/reference/jeff-balding-converts-his-nashville-studio-to-dolby-atmos-with-genelec

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.

I listen to this with a 500 bucks system in my acoustically controlled room..

Then...

Is costlier gear better? It is common place fact to say yes...

But acoustic for example matter more than any brand named choice especially if the basic gear is already well chosen...

Simple scientific and experimental fact....

In acoustic there is an "optimal" possible return for ANY gear choice which is over anything else or over most possible upgrade..."accelerating" return is like diminishing return a very fast end process related to engineering quality /price ratio... Optimization process are slower and deeper process with no link to any marketing conditioning...

Optimization ask more for TIME consumung listening experiments than money consuming upgreading spree...

You cannot replace acoustic improvement with a change of brand in gear, but you can upgrade any gear without changing it when you adapt the room to it....

@asctim Yes, what you say has a lot of merit..

Normally, marginal, or incremental, return is easiest to understand if only one thing is changed at a time. Even that can be tricky with audio.

Should something else be changed as well, like knowledge or appreciation through learning, this complicates but does not invalidate the principle. This is why the words "äll other things being equal" are often used.

Actually (and I digress), the more you learn and discern about what matters, you may find yourself spending less than you otherwise would have on that next bit of kit.

The landscape has changed and any meaningful comparison with the previous change becomes problematic.

I suspect that may be the opposite intent of Mr Harley’s editorial.

I hope I’ve understood you correctly.

{edit - having taken my time tapping that out I now see others have contributed in a meaningful manner so anyway...} 2nd edit - to be abundantly clear, I am talking about marginal or incremental changes in sound quality or spending, like little bite size portions - I speak not of levels of, or total, enjoyment or expenditure. They are increasing, even when marginal may be decreasing.

@mulveling

I agree that if I’m not aware of the weakest link in my system I may have more room to make improvements that are more significant than I otherwise might think, especially if I have tried improving parts that were already relatively strong, leading me to believe I’ve reached the point of diminishing returns. Art Noxon talks about this, suggesting room acoustics are often a weak link:

https://www.acousticsciences.com/asc-articles/the-chain-is-as-strong-as-its-weakest-link/?mc_cid=c10763f7ab&mc_eid=c304374cee