Have I Hit The Point Of Diminishing Returns?

Knghifi, I know another Audiogon member who sold his Andra II's for speakers that were less than half the price of the Andra II's, but much better sounding in his opinion. Spending more money can get you better sound quality, spending less money can get you better sound quality. So what does it all mean?

So what does it all mean?

Hobbies such as Audio, Automobiles ... where results cannot be measured or quanified, law of diminshing returns or increasing returns don't apply. Results are all SUBJECTIVE ... SQ NOT a function of price.

Now if you have a farm growing crop where results can be MEASURED. You hit law of dimishing return when it doesn't increase the crop size by adding more fertilizer.

My .02

I think the main menu is that no system will never reach the pinnacle. There is always more to be done. The problem is making the best possible choices within our budget to improve the sound quality. Diminishing returns? You never know till you add the next element to your system. You may be surprised, maybe not. I do not subscribe to the notion that returns begin to diminish after such and such a point in time.

From your responses, I gather that a goodly number of you are unable to grasp the concept of diminishing returns. I know that this failing is not due to lack of information because the essence has been explained in this very thread.

The Law of Diminishing Returns does not state that no further improvement can be attained. It says that beyond a given point in your refinement trajectory you will pass a point beyond which further improvements come at an ever increasing cost ... that the reward will not be commensurate with the outlay. It has nothing to do with your audiophile justifications or your arbitrarily assigned philosophical contrivances. In fact, it may have nothing to do with many of you at all. In a nutshell: your "bang for the buck" is headed for the red. However, the person who started the thread wants to know if he has passed that point and I say he has. I am not saying that he should or should not continue his pursuit from a hobbyist standpoint but I will continue to assert that, from a purely economic perspective, he like the rest of us has stepped off the deep end and is drifting ever further from shore.

I agree with you Macrojack, I feel that diminshing returns hit very hard and very early in this hobby, earlier than most here would agree with.

That said, there is one flaw with your logic, the sentence "that reward will not be commensurate with the outlay". The main problem is that while the outlay can be measured, the reward cannot be measured. So while some may say they spent 50% more money and improved their sound by 100%, others may say they spent 100% more money and improved their sound by only 5%. The money can be measured, the satisfaction gained from money spent cannot be measured, so diminshing returns will mean different things to different people.

I've stated my case. My current $30K system sounds about 90% as good as my $125K system was. So that is my reasoning behind believing that diminshing returns hit hard and early. I'm sure that a nice $5K system could give my rig a run for it's money.

However, back when I was assembling that $125K system, I swore that each little upgrade was adding another 2%, 5%, 10% improvement to the sound. It was only after tearing the system down and rebuilding a much less expensive system that I realized that all of those dozens and dozens of 5% improvements could not have really existed if a $30K system was 90% as good as a $125K system.

Point being, since the return (musical satisfaction) cannot be quantified, whether it is diminishing or not cannot be measured.