The Law of Accelerating Returns

@noske,

I loved that. It was so Leonard Nimoy!

Spock himself couldn't have refuted it more clearly.

@russ69,

That's been my experience too.

Hi-Fi must be a very tough game to get into. Sometimes at shows you see folks who've poured everything into their design and it simply does not sound that good for the money being asked.

They're probably nice people, and they've probably worked very hard getting to this point, and you don't want to trample over anyone's dreams, but it's hard to offer any advice when so many other products offer similar or better performance at a much lower price.

I don't think this is a business for anyone with a thin skin. It must be more than a little disturbing when you think you've developed a world class product yet no one wants to sit down and listen for long.

@noske +2

 And yet to someone trying to assemble the best-sounding audio system for a given budget, The Law of Diminishing Returns can also be a fallacy. In fact, one could make the case that an audio system follows what I’ll call The Law of Accelerating Returns—that the additional money spent provides a disproportionate amount of the system’s overall performance. 

I would call it law of accelerated potential... which may, or may not be fulfilled.

At the very beginning of my audio journey I heard the two most expensive systems of the time. On being a B&W Nautilus with eight (!) solid state award-winning monoblocks & most expensive digital front of the time. The other the top Audio note system (with Kondo Ongaku) and vinyl (all AN, top of the line). Heard one a few minutes after the other at the audio show. 

Peculiarly, although both were the most expensive rooms by a far cry, yet one was the worst sound of the show and the other the best. (Both by a far margin worst & best).

So, money allows to unlock potential but system synergy & knowing how to set up a system will decide success or failure.

At that time the Nautilus room was a WFT(!?) shock moment for me, and it totally demolished the appeal of B&W loudspeakers, collapsing all my B&W related dreams (generated by hifi magazines) to those cringe-worthy minutes.

Since then I learned that this spectacular Titanic re-enactment was not simply the fault of any of the gear, but the result of the absolute incompetence of the presenter. Each demoed component of the chain was reviewed #1 and got best awards at the time, and they assumed that put all #1 together and you get the absolute top system.

Put all #1 together indiscriminately, without a light bulb in the head, and instead of absolute Nirvana, watch the tragedy of Titanic replay in front of your eyes... and more sadly, ears.

I agree with jerryg123. If you get 1 very good component and the rest are low fi, the system will only sound as good as the weakest component. I'm not saying that you have to spend $10k on every component, but if you get 1 very nice component, you should try to match that level of performance with every other component. 

As for price, you are not going to get top quality sound from a $500 tt or a $700 dac. $7k for a dac, $10k for a tt/cart/tonearm, now you are getting into good sounding gear.