What Do You Get When You Spend Megabucks?

Typical good post by Onhwy61. I agree with your main premise, that you can get excellent sound for $7500, and beyond that the law of diminishing returns kicks in. What you get when you spend the extra money is, IMHO, (i) top quality bass reproduction, although your room may be a limiting factor here, (ii) effortless power, scale and soundstaging for full-scale orchestral reproduction (which will never equal the real thing, no matter how hard we try, but will at least start to hint at it) and (iii) a bit of naturalness, refinement and nuance in the little things that make music more meaningful to you and which just isn't quite all there in the less expensive stuff. That last point is purely subjective in how much it is worth the extra money. Given the many hours of enjoyment I've gotten from my system, it has been worth it to me, but in all likelihood I could live just as happily with the $7500 system, and will probably have to when I retire to smaller quarters.

"Money, doesn't buy happiness and size, doesn't matter." (Tattoos available on request.)

Maybe and maybe not.

It seems what's important is having the talent for using the quantity you have of one or both, wisely.

I think the answer has more to do with what percentage of what you have that is available to you hobby. Some time ago my 'hobby' was touring on a bicycle. By 'touring' I mean I went so extreme as to circle the world on a bicycle.

So, what has this to do with your question? simple. I circled the entie continent of Africa on my bicycle and in the Sudan I got myself invited to a Safari Camp that was serving just one man and his wife. Over the camp fire the fellow told me that he was paying something like $50,000.00 for just over four weeks in Africa.

I told him that I had budgeted roughly $1,800.00 for six months in Africa (camping, eating from the markets. etc.) The poor fellow....gagged. I had to remind him that his $50,000.00 constituted much less of his savings than my $1,800.00 did of mine.

so, what's the point? Spend what you can afford and...enjoy!

the synergy and room comments above are the most appropriate IMO. My system is in the $25,000 new price range and, to me it smoked a local shops $90,000 reference system. Their $10,000 8 ft Transparent speaker cables left me wondering, not wanting

Often headaches, sometimes a little remorse but ocassionally, a piece of heaven. Some nights everything seems to come together and you can almost convince yourself that you are actually being transported to the site of a musical event. The problem is that high prices do not automatically equate to great sound. It seems to take a significant amount of synergy among components, including the rights electrical and mechanical isolation and even the right wires, the right room and the right software. I was reminded over the weekend that even simple changes can go very wrong and of the benefit of having a friend with an excellent set of ears. Recently, I have been experimenting with mechical isolation devices. Having great luch placing a Neuance shelf under a Lindemann SACD player on a Mana frame, I assumed that the same set up would work optimally in other places. The answer was a rather qualified yes; in one other place, it yielded an improvement but in other palces it resulted in worse sound. It took a friend removing these devices to home in on the mistake.

But back to your question, when everything is right, you would be amazed at how good the sound can be; particularly playing vinyl, late at night.