Have I Hit The Point Of Diminishing Returns?

Macrojack, perhaps you should quit while behind and stop further embarrassing yourself. The world doesn't revolve around you and you don't get to dictate what's ABSOLUTE.

Trying to fit a square peg in a round hole is not going to work. There's NO best in audio!

@Douglas_schroeder, I was reffering to dozens and dozens of "upgrades", maybe even a hundred, over a period of 15 years. I didn't just go from a $25K rig to a $125K in two weeks and proclaim a 5% or 10% upgrade. I'm talking upgrading fuses, yes a 4% improvement, upgraded power conditioner, 5% improvement, upgrade power cord, 5% improvement, upgrade phono stage, 10% improvement, upgrade cartridge, 10% improvement....etc., etc., etc....

So if all of those perceived improvements were actually real, or calculated correctly, then how come undoing it all only set me back to 90%? I am not saying that the incremental gains did not exist, only that they were probably not nearly as big as I thought they were at the time. Perhaps what I was thinking was a 5% improvement, was in actuality only a 0.25% improvement.

Yes, this is all said in hindsight. Obviously, if I had known that quadrupling the outlay would only increase performance by 10%, perhaps I would not have travelled that road. I may have just spent that money on some more exotic vacations. ;^)

this is one of those essentially unsolvable metaphysical queries with no right or wrong answers. i sort of agree with knghifi--where and whether one has hit the point of diminishing returns is ultimately up to the person writing the check. the way i look at it, while you certainly can objectively measure aspects of audio performance (e.g. signal-to-noise ratios, distortion levels, etc.), it doesn't necessarily follow that you can measure "improvement" on such basis, since so much of audio appreciation is inherently subjective--i.e. a component with "better" measured performance may not necessarily sound better to you for a whole host of reasons.
i'd also submit that people tend to fix their point of diminishing returns on the bases of their budgets. for example, i maintained for a long time that while the sonic differences between, say a $300 cdp and a $2000 cdp were very significant, the difference between that $2000 cdp and a $5000 cdp were only incremental (and, in my opinion, perhaps not cost justified). undoubtedly, if i had had more disposable cash, i would feel otherwise, and would set the point higher.
back to the mill.....

I suspect you maybe meant to say "philosophical question" not "metaphysical question." Metaphysics is an interesting subject all of its own.

Metaphysics is interesting but doesn't pay the bills. - A. Einstein

Philosophical, or possibly a rhetorical question.....definitely a question with no absolute answer.