What is the threshold (in U$) of diminishing return in high End Audio?

[Jinjuku]

A bottom line to all this is there is a certain point where all your money in the world will not net you even a 1% improvement. I think Bob Carver's nulling experiment proved this.

 

[esldude]

A bottom line to all this is there is a certain point where all your money in the world will not net you even a 1% improvement. I think Bob Carver's nulling experiment proved this.

Actually, what old Bob proved was even way back then you are paying extra money to tastefully dirty up the result compared to true fidelity. Paying for coloration preference when fidelity has been achieved at much lower cost. I don't see that has changed in between now and then.

 

[bgupton]

Hi

This thread in inspired by the recent "$5,000 system to obliterate $30,000 system" type of thread we have recently seen on the WBF. It is my contention that there is a threshold beyond which progression/impovemnt virtually stop and we start going sideways.I IOW different flavors but IMO and sometimes IME, improvements are minimal to nil.
What do you think is that threshold in term of investments in components only? I have put aside for now the ever important listening environment.
Waiting for your input

In my experience, the diminishing returns concept is one of the biggest lies in HiFi and is largely perpetuated by audiophiles & hobbyists who lack direct experience living with systems in higher tiered price points than what they can comfortably afford.

Most audiophiles who can comfortably afford higher priced HiFi systems and have made that investment are naturally reluctant to venture into this debate for fear of coming off as elitist. So this discussion is typically dominated by people who have largely decided that they believe in the diminishing returns concept or who use that as their justification for not spending more. That's totally ok. People should enjoy music on the best system they can afford and should decide where they are comfortable drawing the line for their spending.

But the idea that a well thought out $5K system will come super close in performance to a well thought out $30K, $50K or $150K+ system is preposterous. I'm not saying that there aren't fantastic sounding systems that can be put together for $500 - $5K. Certainly you can. But on average, an equally well thought out $30K system is going to smoke that less costly system.

The key, of course, is that the systems need to be well thought out. It's certainly easy to Frankenstein a $30K system that sounds so-so if the components and/or room aren't well matched. And this definitely happens. So I'm sure you can find less costly systems that outperform more costly systems. But to then generalize this to all of HiFi is wrong. They are the exceptions, not the rule.

As I mentioned above, it is typically people who lack experience with well thought out systems at higher price points who perpetuate this myth. Of course, even amongst audiophiles, the percentage of those in the hobby with direct experience at the higher priced tiers is inevitably a much smaller group of people. The much larger group who lacks the direct experience of living with a more costly system will often exclaim that they've heard $500K systems that don't sound as good as their own modestly priced $5K system or whatever.

This, of course, is ridiculous. You really need to live with a system (any system) in order to hear and appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of that system. What might sound un-involving on first listen might very well turn out to be highly musical and interesting in different ways and with lots of different source material. People are always welcome to make snap judgements, but in general we should understand those judgements lack the needed context to be educated opinions.

I've personally owned systems at the $500, $3K, $5K, $15K, $25K and $75K+ price points over the last 20 years. Each system has been revelatory. Each time I've always thought that there is no way it can get better than this. I was thoroughly caught in the myth of diminishing returns. And yet when I finally decided to upgrade my system, I have always been shocked by how much better it gets.

I doubt I will ever upgrade my current system. I've already spent more than I ever thought I would. But I no longer believe in diminishing returns. Hell, I'm not even sure how one would measure that subjectively or objectively. Better is better and if you're building a well thought out system, the improvements should be substantial at every price tier.

 

[Jinjuku]

In my experience, the diminishing returns concept is one of the biggest lies in HiFi and is largely perpetuated by audiophiles & hobbyists who lack direct experience living with systems in higher tiered price points than what they can comfortably afford.

I think ROI is elastic in that it differs for different components.

Using a DAC as an example: The Oppo HA-1. It didn't matter even with a Luxman unit that I've had for evaluation. There's just no real gain to be had after having listened and not knowing what was in the chain. Mileage may vary but I think proper evaluation would track with my experience.

Speakers are where it's at and I think there is always performance to be had. Although for $75K I would hire someone to come in and roll a custom active setup.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

In my experience, the diminishing returns concept is one of the biggest lies in HiFi and is largely perpetuated by audiophiles & hobbyists who lack direct experience living with systems in higher tiered price points than what they can comfortably afford

.

In my experience, "the more you pay, the more you get" is the biggest lie in high end, and is largely perpetuated by guys who've spent a small fortune that they are compelled to justify, and they will hear every dime invested, regardless of, well, almost anything.

Most audiophiles who can comfortably afford higher priced HiFi systems and have made that investment are naturally reluctant to venture into this debate for fear of coming off as elitist.

You haven't been around here long, huh?

I doubt I will ever upgrade my current system. I've already spent more than I ever thought I would. But I no longer believe in diminishing returns. Hell, I'm not even sure how one would measure that subjectively or objectively. Better is better and if you're building a well thought out system, the improvements should be substantial at every price tier.

Objectively, it's not all that hard, and supports the diminishing returns argument pretty well, until you get to some boutique stuff that, objectively, actually gets worse at higher price ranges. Subjectively you can't measure anything...well you could gather together a variety of listeners of broadly varying experience and run blind listening tests to determine preference trends, and repeat that through different systems, a lot of trials, a lot of years...oh yeah, Harman does that. And Toole and Olive did it for a couple of decades at the Canadian research center, with no profit/sales motive, before they joined Harman. And what they found was that objectively accurate performance is also the dominantly preferred performance. And they demonstrated a lot of diminishing returns. Of course that was just speakers. Where the diminishing returns generally start higher up the food chain.

Tim

 

[dallasjustice]

Sorry, you don't get to start the post off with "in my experience" and then go onto to generalize about what you assume is everyone else's experience.

In my experience, the diminishing returns concept is one of the biggest lies in HiFi and is largely perpetuated by audiophiles & hobbyists who lack direct experience living with systems in higher tiered price points than what they can comfortably afford.

Most audiophiles who can comfortably afford higher priced HiFi systems and have made that investment are naturally reluctant to venture into this debate for fear of coming off as elitist. So this discussion is typically dominated by people who have largely decided that they believe in the diminishing returns concept or who use that as their justification for not spending more. That's totally ok. People should enjoy music on the best system they can afford and should decide where they are comfortable drawing the line for their spending.

But the idea that a well thought out $5K system will come super close in performance to a well thought out $30K, $50K or $150K+ system is preposterous. I'm not saying that there aren't fantastic sounding systems that can be put together for $500 - $5K. Certainly you can. But on average, an equally well thought out $30K system is going to smoke that less costly system.

The key, of course, is that the systems need to be well thought out. It's certainly easy to Frankenstein a $30K system that sounds so-so if the components and/or room aren't well matched. And this definitely happens. So I'm sure you can find less costly systems that outperform more costly systems. But to then generalize this to all of HiFi is wrong. They are the exceptions, not the rule.

As I mentioned above, it is typically people who lack experience with well thought out systems at higher price points who perpetuate this myth. Of course, even amongst audiophiles, the percentage of those in the hobby with direct experience at the higher priced tiers is inevitably a much smaller group of people. The much larger group who lacks the direct experience of living with a more costly system will often exclaim that they've heard $500K systems that don't sound as good as their own modestly priced $5K system or whatever.

This, of course, is ridiculous. You really need to live with a system (any system) in order to hear and appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of that system. What might sound un-involving on first listen might very well turn out to be highly musical and interesting in different ways and with lots of different source material. People are always welcome to make snap judgements, but in general we should understand those judgements lack the needed context to be educated opinions.

I've personally owned systems at the $500, $3K, $5K, $15K, $25K and $75K+ price points over the last 20 years. Each system has been revelatory. Each time I've always thought that there is no way it can get better than this. I was thoroughly caught in the myth of diminishing returns. And yet when I finally decided to upgrade my system, I have always been shocked by how much better it gets.

I doubt I will ever upgrade my current system. I've already spent more than I ever thought I would. But I no longer believe in diminishing returns. Hell, I'm not even sure how one would measure that subjectively or objectively. Better is better and if you're building a well thought out system, the improvements should be substantial at every price tier.

 

[zztop7]

Sorry, you don't get to start the post off with "in my experience" and then go onto to generalize about what you assume is everyone else's experience.

?new thread?: dallasjustice for empty post on the Supreme Court! The Court could use some perceptive & fairly young blood.
zz.

 

[bgupton]

.

In my experience, "the more you pay, the more you get" is the biggest lie in high end, and is largely perpetuated by guys who've spent a small fortune that they are compelled to justify, and they will hear every dime invested, regardless of, well, almost anything.



You haven't been around here long, huh?

I doubt I will ever upgrade my current system. I've already spent more than I ever thought I would. But I no longer believe in diminishing returns. Hell, I'm not even sure how one would measure that subjectively or objectively. Better is better and if you're building a well thought out system, the improvements should be substantial at every price tier.

Objectively, it's not all that hard, and supports the diminishing returns argument pretty well, until you get to some boutique stuff that, objectively, actually gets worse at higher price ranges. Subjectively you can't measure anything...well you could gather together a variety of listeners of broadly varying experience and run blind listening tests to determine preference trends, and repeat that through different systems, a lot of trials, a lot of years...oh yeah, Harman does that. And Toole and Olive did it for a couple of decades at the Canadian research center, with no profit/sales motive, before they joined Harman. And what they found was that objectively accurate performance is also the dominantly preferred performance. And they demonstrated a lot of diminishing returns. Of course that was just speakers. Where the diminishing returns generally start higher up the food chain.

Tim

The problem with relying only/primarily on the purely objective measurements is that we simply don't have a way to measure all aspects of music reproduction. We can measure the flatness of frequency response until we are blue in the face, yet the same speakers in two different systems will sound different.

We all value different sonic traits differently and we simply don't have a way to objectively measure all of those things. Even if it was possible to measure all of these things, it wouldn't be practical. It's much easier to trust your ears, but that also requires a willingness to miss on a system change from time to time.

Some people in this hobby love the gear and have the financial resources to try lots of different combinations. More power to them. They don't have to justify how they spend their money to anyone but themselves and maybe their family.

 

[edorr]

In my experience, the diminishing returns concept is one of the biggest lies in HiFi and is largely perpetuated by audiophiles & hobbyists who lack direct experience living with systems in higher tiered price points than what they can comfortably afford.

Most audiophiles who can comfortably afford higher priced HiFi systems and have made that investment are naturally reluctant to venture into this debate for fear of coming off as elitist. So this discussion is typically dominated by people who have largely decided that they believe in the diminishing returns concept or who use that as their justification for not spending more. That's totally ok. People should enjoy music on the best system they can afford and should decide where they are comfortable drawing the line for their spending.

But the idea that a well thought out $5K system will come super close in performance to a well thought out $30K, $50K or $150K+ system is preposterous. I'm not saying that there aren't fantastic sounding systems that can be put together for $500 - $5K. Certainly you can. But on average, an equally well thought out $30K system is going to smoke that less costly system.

The idea of diminishing returns simply asserts that the marginal performance improvement of going from a $5K system to a $10K system is far higher than going from a $75K system to an $80K system, i.e. spending $5K more buys you a far higher relative performance improvement in the former scenario than the latter. This is a completely uncontroversial idea, not even worth arguing about and least of all the "biggest lie in HiFi". However, diminishing returns in no shape or form suggest there is an abolute limit to performance improvement (i.e. zero returns), and all spending beyond a certain point is futile or snobbery.

The topic of this thread is at what pricepoint do marginal improvement from spending more start flattening out (typically shown as an inflection point on an S-curve). You're taking this of topic, based on a misunderstanding of the concept of diminishing returns.

 

[nc42acc]

May I interject my personal thoughts on this subject? I think once you reach a certain level do we, audiophiles, take different as better? My best analogy is our path is like a tree, fairly straight until higher the tree rises then it branches off in all directions. Do we assume a lateral move is better just because it sounds "different"? It seems to me the diminishing returns subject is a moot point if the person spending the money is happy with their expenditure.

 

[bgupton]

The idea of diminishing returns simply asserts that the marginal performance improvement of going from a $5K system to a $10K system is far higher than going from a $75K system to an $80K system, i.e. spending $5K more buys you a far higher relative performance improvement in the former scenario than the latter. This is a completely uncontroversial idea, not even worth arguing about and least of all the "biggest lie in HiFi". However, diminishing returns in no shape or form suggest there is an abolute limit to performance improvement (i.e. zero returns), and all spending beyond a certain point is futile or snobbery.

The topic of this thread is at what pricepoint do marginal improvement from spending more start flattening out (typically shown as an inflection point on an S-curve). You're taking this of topic, based on a misunderstanding of the concept of diminishing returns.

I completely agree that the idea of diminishing returns is treated as if it's an "uncontroversial idea". My assertion is that the very foundation of this idea in HiFi is a lie. At a minimum, it is unprovable.

Please explain to me how your are going to create this S-curve chart that proves where your spending starts flattening out.

You can't do it because to do so would require specific objective measurements that we all agree are directly related to sonic performance. While there are some data points that can be measured and compared (like frequency response), there is hardly universal agreement that this data tells the full story on what a component will sound like.

We all value different things in music and prioritize around what we like and dislike. It's highly subjective and any perceived improvements to a system have to be gauged based on the importance the individual places on specific characteristics. The idea that there are always diminishing returns in HiFi assumes there's some magical way to measure this when there simply isn't.

I will also add that it is this lie that is responsible, in part, for the declining interest in HiFi. Too many people assume a lower priced $2K system will sound almost as good as that $50K system, so only a crazy person would spend the $50k. This works the other way too. It's like the people who say that MP3's are just as good as high rez audio. Plenty of people believe that lie too since it is rarely challenged in the general population.

 

[Gregadd]

Sorry, you don't get to start the post off with "in my experience" and then go onto to generalize about what you assume is everyone else's experience.

Finally someone who understands you can't generalize from the specific. He does however make some good points. If you have ever driven a Mercedes for any significant periond of time, you'll understand what he is talking about.

 

[esldude]

May I interject my personal thoughts on this subject? I think once you reach a certain level do we, audiophiles, take different as better? My best analogy is our path is like a tree, fairly straight until higher the tree rises then it branches off in all directions. Do we assume a lateral move is better just because it sounds "different"? It seems to me the diminishing returns subject is a moot point if the person spending the money is happy with their expenditure.

I think what you are describing happens. I think early on getting better equipment is easy. You keep improving and enjoying that. You get addicted to improvement. Then substantial improvements become more difficult and expensive to pursue. One's particular circumstances then leave one prone to see any difference as another dose of improvement that you have become addicted to along the way. Seems a peculiar audiophile affliction making it difficult to say to yourself, "this is really high level stereo, and not much more that can be better without huge expense or effort. I think I will just jump off the treadmill and enjoy music". Audiophile nervosa. If we can just get it in the diagnostic manuals maybe we can treat it as a medical condition including with placebos.

 

[esldude]

I completely agree that the idea of diminishing returns is treated as if it's an "uncontroversial idea". My assertion is that the very foundation of this idea in HiFi is a lie. At a minimum, it is unprovable.

Please explain to me how your are going to create this S-curve chart that proves where your spending starts flattening out.

You can't do it because to do so would require specific objective measurements that we all agree are directly related to sonic performance. While there are some data points that can be measured and compared (like frequency response), there is hardly universal agreement that this data tells the full story on what a component will sound like.

Yes frequency response is a big one, and doesn't tell the whole story. It does tell most of the story. Does not need to tell all, just most. Pretty apparent once you have the data point (FR in this case) that tells most, getting the little bit left will be increasingly difficult and requires outsized resources vs the benefit.

The same is true across the board in regards to flatness of response, low end extension, low distortion and loudness capability. Measures may not tell all, they tell most and the corroborate what sounds better mostly. Treble extension may not as doing that well is not terribly expensive or difficult at least in the main. What is left past that is more difficult to specify and accomplish. Seems quite clear that will follow a diminishing returns curve rather obviously.

We all value different things in music and prioritize around what we like and dislike. It's highly subjective and any perceived improvements to a system have to be gauged based on the importance the individual places on specific characteristics. The idea that there are always diminishing returns in HiFi assumes there's some magical way to measure this when there simply isn't.

This also actually argues against your premise. You have conflated preference with performance. To offer good options with regard to preference you need basic performance to put preferences within the performance envelope of what is possible.

I will also add that it is this lie that is responsible, in part, for the declining interest in HiFi. Too many people assume a lower priced $2K system will sound almost as good as that $50K system, so only a crazy person would spend the $50k. This works the other way too. It's like the people who say that MP3's are just as good as high rez audio. Plenty of people believe that lie too since it is rarely challenged in the general population.

If there is any truth to this, and I really don't buy the idea, it would represent like .1% of the problem. I actually see the reverse. People expect on the face of it a $50k system will wow you and leave you slack jawed. They still may think it crazy money for just music, but I think those believing $2k puts you in sniffing distance of a $50 k system to be a myth you have created.

 

[rockitman]

In my experience, "the more you pay, the more you get" is the biggest lie in high end...<snip>

Really ? What's your personal experience with an expensive audio system ? My guess...you don't have any experience. Talk about unfounded generalizations.

 

[Folsom]

The only way to really beat a fairly significant amount of money in a system is DIY. But even that isn't cheap. You're not walking away under $10k for something very good DIY. (Actual figures may be offensive)

The fact that I can't even build a whole stereo, let alone a power conditioner for $5k in parts that has hit a "diminishing returns" factor... That should tell you something. Now factor in markup for a business to exist.

Diminishing returns are not overly close. There's a few companies out there that do get closer for less but they often have limitations with the product. You're not going to get huge watts, or speakers that play loud levels or work in rooms that say Pendragons would be fit for.

 

[Purite Audio]

$50k spent on a 'perfect' listening room, that would be money well spent.
Keith.

 

[Andrew Stenhouse]

These are my audio truths.

One, you pays you gets.

Two, you can get a pretty decent vinyl or digital system for around 20k, but, all things being equal, the vinyl based system will sound twice as good.

Three, the only opinion that counts is my opinion when I'm the one spending the money.

 

[DaveyF]

What is a diminishing return when one is discussing an audio system and the sound of same?? I would very much like to know the answer to this question...

 

[Folsom]

Perhaps diminishing returns are well represented when buying lemons for too much money. But it's not as if there are a lot of them, or that they stay around as a product for long.