Point of diminishing returns

When you wife says "If were ever get a divorce, I'm keeping this stuff" that is the point of diminishing returns.

when your divorce attorney asks to see your financial statements <(:{

Macrojack,

Most of the responses seem to have addressed the theory of diminishing returns, but you asked about point of diminishing returns. Imagine a plot of goodness as a function of cost. Assuming you have a metric for goodness -- the great devil for audiophilia, at some point the resulting curve will reach asymptot, goodness will cease to rise in direct proportion, or even substantially, with cost. That's the point of diminishing returns. For some audiophiles, cost and the concommitant bragging rights are intertwined, so their sense of goodness rises in lock step with cost. For them, a point of diminishing returns will not exist. Same is true with collecting, where the metric is rarity and rarity usually corresponds to cost.

db

Most of the threads here are a prime example of this theory at work, in that the effort spent to read post #70 will require the same energy that it took to get 90% of the answer in post #4. And yet, post #70 may provide you with only 2% of additional information. But when it finally clicks, it all gels like magic, right?

That's why that 2% is priceless, IMO.

Hi All,

The "point of diminishing returns" typically describes the amount of performance that is achieved at a particular price point (from a specific product or from a group of products) and how much more money it will take to achieve a significant improvement in performance. If the original price point is sufficient and the product is of good quality it will usually take quite a bit more money to buy a product with significantly higher performance. Of course, when we are discussing audio components it is very subjective but that is the general principle.

For example: a $500.00 high quality pair of loudspeakers has a particular level of performance (usually pretty good in a number of areas). To buy a different speaker that is 50% better in those areas (and possibly better in a few other areas as well) may require spending 100% more money ($1000). The amount of improvement (50%) is not equal to the amount of extra money spent (twice as much). To achieve an even higher improvement (75%) compared to the original speakers may require spending four times the amount of money (400% or $2000). As you can see, as higher and higher levels of performance are desired it requires a progressively disproportional amount of money to be spent. These percentages and amounts are only used here for illustration and may not necessarily coincide with your experience or perception.

Best,

Barry