The law of diminshing returns?

I will admit that I am not what I think is a true audiophile. The belief that a power cord sounds dramatically different, but that difference is too subtle for those less sophisticate than the princess and the pea must be a bicycle tire pump to the self-esteem has far passed returns that diminish into undetectable for me. 

There is the story, known to some here, of a man who tied up his family building the ultimate sound system and listening room. He spent years and over one million dollars building it. when he finally finished, this large acoustically advanced room had only one sweet spot and one listening chair. He also was diagnosed with ALS when he finished and lived only one year to listen to his perfect system. 

I think it is possible to go too far with this, or any other hobby. I designed and built my own amplifier and was satisfied several years ago. Now, I listen to the performances of compositions that appeal to me. 

@kevn + I've based my many decades of building systems on this exact thing. Nearly countless incremental improvements are possible, while each in isolation may conform to the law of diminishing returns, taken in totality they provide much more value, may even be transcendent.

The real affliction many audiophiles are cursed with is the 'law of diminishing appreciation.' How many times have you upgraded a component and stayed up listening to music all night. You sit there in amazement proclaiming that you have reached the end of the tunnel. You tell people that you're finally done with upgrading your system. It just can't get any better than this, right?

Yet, a year or two later (or a shorter period for some), the appreciation diminishes. Your brain adjusts to the new normal. What thrilled you at first becomes mundane. Your brain is now craving something different, something better. You enter the 'component lust' phase once again and incessantly start browsing youtube audio reviews, used gear market, dealer websites, etc. Then some of us buy something more expensive, something 'better' as per your brain. Others with limited budgets embark on the 'tweaks' journey. What was 'perfection' not too long ago suddenly has all these deficiencies that can only be fixed via footers, cables, shiny stones, Helmholtz resonators, magic pixie dust, I mean contact enhancers, etc. etc.

You stay up all night and make the same assertions all over again al'a Steve Huff (endgame component). Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat.

Exactly right!

It is why this principle (not a law) describe, not a point, not an irreversible direction  but an oscillatory zone between acoustics experience and gear design...

The real affliction many audiophiles are cursed with is the 'law of diminishing appreciation.' How many times have you upgraded a component and stayed up listening to music all night. You sit there in amazement proclaiming that you have reached the end of the tunnel. You tell people that you're finally done with upgrading your system. It just can't get any better than this, right?

Yet, a year or two later (or a shorter period for some), the appreciation diminishes. Your brain adjusts to the new normal. What thrilled you at first becomes mundane. Your brain is now craving something different, something better. You enter the 'component lust' phase once again and incessantly start browsing youtube audio reviews, used gear market, dealer websites, etc. Then some of us buy something more expensive, something 'better' as per your brain. Others with limited budgets embark on the 'tweaks' journey. What was 'perfection' not too long ago suddenly has all these deficiencies that can only be fixed via footers, cables, shiny stones, Helmholtz resonators, magic pixie dust, I mean contact enhancers, etc. etc.

You stay up all night and make the same assertions all over again al'a Steve Huff (endgame component). Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat.

I think what @ghdprentice had to say has been mischaracterized. This is not as complicated as it’s been made to be. Every one of us has a different satisfaction threshold when it comes to sound and pain threshold when it comes to money. There is no right or wrong, just differences.  

I own a set of speakers which I enjoy. Yet, I have no doubt that if I invested twice as much in loudspeakers, and did my homework, I would achieve incremental gains in performance, not a doubling a performance, but certainly a perceptible gain. It does not bruise my ego to acknowledge that there is equipment out there that will produce a sound that would be more pleasing to me than my equipment if I was willing and able to invest the resources. It should go without saying that paying proper attention to acoustics will improve the performance of most any system, but that is not the question.

If I simply don’t have the money to make the investment, then that question is not relevant to me because it’s an impossibility. If I do have the resources, then it’s simply a question of whether I value the incremental gain in audio enjoyment more than other potential uses of the money. Opportunity cost as economists would say.

One person in that situation might invest in the speakers while the next person might choose otherwise. Neither one of them is a fool, neither one is uninformed, their financial pain point is likely different and their level of sufficient sonic satisfaction is likely different. I may have misunderstood, but I think what @ghdprentice was saying is that there is a subset of us who are willing to incur significantly greater opportunity cost to achieve incremental sonic gains. There is a subset of us who are not willing to do that because of their individual circumstances and preferences. And that would seem to be objectively true. Doesn’t make anyone superior, just different choices. Apologies to him if I misunderstood his comment.

 It’s interesting that  the money each of us chooses to invest in this hobby has to be such a divisive, vexing question. It says something about our hobby, I’m just not exactly sure what