Law of Accelerated Returns

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

@noske You make good points about deciding what matters, and then having what matters change to you over time as your experience evolves. I think you have understood me and expanded on it. I’ve had exposure recently to a co-worker’s speakers he built being played through a new, very highly measuring Topping amp, and an old Hafler amp. The new amp really sounded dry and tight, and not that interesting. Better though if it went through a pre-amp. The Hafler sounded much more interesting and vivid, but I suspected it might get tiresome. We both agreed on the sound difference. Both of us didn’t expect it. The perception of instruments taking up spaces in the air was happening on the Hafler. Fascinating, scintillating. I loved it. I’ve never heard anything real do that. Or have I? Am I just not used to hearing something realistic when I can’t see it actually there? It’s really hard to tell. I’d have to live with it for a while to understand it better. In short, I’m convinced there are possibilities with sound reproduction that I have not yet fully explored. I know that I can get a lot of enjoyment out of fairly basic equipment that measure well in a room with good acoustics. Interestingly these speakers when we played them were not in any kind of an optimal listening room at all, at least not by standard practices. They were just plopped on a desk and crammed pretty close to the sidewalls in a nook in the office. Still they were doing something very interesting with that Hafler amp. 

@jbhiller , as you noticed, after a point price has little to do with it. Regardless of price the majority of systems are never going to perform at SOTA levels in the rooms they are in without analysis, room treatment and digital correction. Now I'm in for it. 

@mapman , That omnidirectional thing died decades ago. Speakers with controlled directivity will out perform omni directional speakers in most rooms as they create fewer early reflections. The outlier is bass because it is virtually impossible to control directivity at low frequencies and the resultant nodal behavior can be difficult (impossible?) to ameliorate.