The graph above is linear and is superficial...
Because it does not account for the many important factors at play...
I dont know why i cannot put my own graph here...
Anyway...
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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@sokogear Why would you think spending double on a speaker would yield a very small improvement? I would think if chosen well, it would be a large improvement. Plus we all know a system is the sum of its parts, and small benefits stack up and should amplify each other. A speaker cable that is 20% better than another is letting you hear 20% more of each of the upstream components. I’m not sure mathematically my point works, but you get the idea. The significant increase in spooky realism of a singer being in the room I got from my recent cheap Ethernet cable upgrade didn’t come from nowhere. The benefit came from all the other money spent around it. I’m not saying it’s a linear or even a truly quantifiable thing, or that every upgrade will provide the same level of improvement. Also one may think that for example two amps sound similar, but a much more revealing speaker may make the difference more audible and reveal a character that wasn’t heard previously.
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@emailists - I never said spending double on a speaker would only lead to a small improvement in sound. I was refuting the law of accelerating returns that said you would get more improvement spending $5K more on a $50K component than on a $5K one. Each incremental dollar spent on a given component typically will get less and less improvement the more you spend, once you've passed the entry level point. I am sure you can get tremendous improvement doubling your expenditure on speakers, and sometimes no improvement or even degradation. |
@emailists + Yes, it may be a relatively smaller expenditure that improves sound to a much greater extent than that expenditure's incremental or percentage of total system cost. And yes, this much greater than expected performance requires a total system that has the resolving powers to expose this.
In picturing this in my mind I can see my system living atop 10,000 ft mountain, this relatively small expenditure may allow system to live atop a 15,000 ft or perhaps higher mountain.
I recently experienced this very thing with a series of relatively small expenditures, boutique tubes and optimized optical network that allowed my system to live at far higher altitude than previous.
Law of diminishing returns is existent up until the insertion of particular item or items that take system to much higher plane. |
@sns -we’re talking about individual component cost, not treatments or tweaks. That is why some of the more questionable tweaks are more popular with those with expensive systems. The incremental cost of these items are an extremely low % of their system cost and represent little risk if they add nothing or minimal SQ improvement. |
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