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The Law of Diminishing Digital Returns

When is the sound good enough? Is that $2500 CDP $1500 better sounding than the $1000 player? I have read posts on members favorite CDP'S - i.e., Ayre, Opus, Sony, Rega, Arcam, Naim, Musical Fidelity, and countless others. I guess my question is: When you get to a certain price point (I am guessing it is in the $1000 - $1500 range) are players worth the additional $1000's in some cases for the 5% improvement in sound quality? There has to be a player out there that is really close to those $4k to $5k CDP's that is a pleasure to listen to (or even a Giant Kiler) for around $1000. Am I the only one who feels this way? Let's keep modded players out of this please. I am looking for your thought on players right out of the box that wowed you!
mattcone
tvad
9,467 posts
 
Excellent analogy, Phaelon.

Dollars spent NEVER correlate to an equal percentage improvement gain in audio. But, that 5%-10% improvement achieved through spending double is often the difference between excellent hifi and real music in your listening room.

FYI, I am NOT referring to the cost of one modded player over another. There are plenty of listeners who prefer modded machines costing significantly less than mine, and I am not about to disagree with anyone's personal preference.
matt8268
92 posts
 
In response to some of the requests I got to elaborate on computer-based audio, I started a new thread with some info:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?ddgtl&1141250565&read&3&4&
phaelon
1,038 posts
 
Tvad, Thank you
audphile1's avatar
audphile1
1,368 posts
 
With what I heard in my system, it is pretty tough to beat the Bel Canto DAC2 I am currently using. I compared it to a more expensive dac. Yes, the more expensive dac was better, but it still did not make me want to sell the Bel Canto. I really was looking to hear big improvement and got dissapointed by a hair splitting differences. It wasn't worth it. Now back to Warren's point. I am thinking of moddig the DAC2. I think I can bridge that small gap between it and the performance of the more expensive dacs. Looking for a good modder, I am considering TRL. $550 that they charge for a mod is way less than the difference I need to pay to obtain a new dac that's going to beat the Bel Canto by a significant margin. So, point of dimishing returns for me in my system started at around the performance of a $1000 dac. May be my system is not revealing enough, but I have doubts about that.
hiend3
38 posts
 
Well the diffrence between digital players for the most part is SMALL. I have a older 500.00 player and a newer 3500.00 player. there is a difrence yes about 10% at best.
I can make a much bigger diffrence swapping tubes much bigger. Buy a very good player, spend the money and upgrade your speakers. Too many people upgrade everthing else forgetting the speakers. I kept my 500.00 player and purchased 22,000 speakers there are huge diffrences actally between players but you need other great componants FIRST
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