Is $2500 the point of diminishing returns?

It all depends on the rest of the system. If I'm running the entry level Yamaha 2ch with a pair of Andrew jones Pioneer Bookshelf speaker (a good entry level system), my point of diminishing returns on a turntable is going to be at a different point that if I was running a top end McIntosh system.

The point of diminishing returns is when you get too far out in front with one part of your system and it doesn't match. It would be nice if that point was a universally accepted monetary sum but it is not.

 

This is a critical point you're making. It's difficult to grasp and easy to dismiss.

Is there a good universal analogy we could all relate to?

I tend to think about the change over from standard definition to high definition television. I recall not realizing how poor SDTV was in contrast to what my eyes are capable of resolving. Fast forward to today and ultra high definition is becoming more common. Once again, there's a leap in resolution which is closer to what our eyes are capable of appreciating. My expectations are, once again, forever altered. It's not all that different from slowly working up from mass consumer gear and into specialty gear. You really have to hear it and then be willing to sincerely consider how large the gap is.

 

The first time I really heard a truly high end system was in the 80's during a visit to a high end audio purveyor. It was like seeing the Wizard of Oz as a kid for the first time. It felt like everything went from a black and white world to instant Technicolor. So that's my analogy when describing a quality audio experience to those not so taken with the hobby. A Damascene moment, delivered through a pair of Infinity Reference speakers hooked up to untold watts. I assume many of us have had something like that happen to us, or we would not be here.

What is the price of an audio epiphany?

I think we spend our time, money and good sense trying to recreate audio nirvana in our own homes in the most palatable way possible. For some, it's obtaining all out cutting edge stuff with a lifelong affliction of upgrade-itis. For others, well, we need to keep peace in the home while not losing our dignity and make do with finding that diminishing return formula for us. We all have our own value meter. $2,500 is as reasonable a number as any for most, acknowledging that the medium income in the US is approaching $60K. For audiophiles with expensive tastes, I hope your income exceeds that number by a fair bit, or that you are frugal in your other worldly pursuits.

Then there is this guy. I'm having this photo enlarged and framed and it is going up on the wall next to my rig. It was taken earlier this year by a journalist after a particularly nasty bombing in Syria in April. Something tells me I could empty my bank accounts, obtain some Wilsons powered by some VACs, do all of the room treatments in the world and not have an iota of enjoyment and appreciation that this man seems to be finding. He will never know the sense of wonderment he has given me.

 

Wonder what he has in his pipe.

 

Brilliant photo.

 

Nice post, and a really beautiful and powerful picture to bring it home. If you missed it, PBS did a piece on it too after the picture went viral back in April ... From the ashes of Aleppo, a sound of hope

 

Thanks for posting that - I only managed to capture the photos from another site, but missed the PBS piece. Excellent.

 

I find Herb to be Mr. Hyperbole and coming from me that says something. The Elac is an OK loudspeaker and good value for $269 - but the AN AX Two at $900 kills it

Not only is this a fantastic picture but your writing about this picture is brilliant as well. Thanks for this - it is both poignant and surreal.

 

Diminishing returns can apply to every purchase we make. You can go and get a $29 printer that will print your documents - or you can spend $50 and it may not do the job of printing any better but it may add a photocopier. The more you spend the more the thing does - some machines will make better prints etc. You can spend over $1000 on a printer.
Phones - same shtick - the flagship phones run around $1,000 the cheapo will be $50 and you can make phone calls and check the e-mail on both. The fancy phone will be waterproof or have a nicer looking screen and might play video games faster.
Watched - Timex tells the correct time for $50 - Rolex is Rolex and costs $5000 and may actually tell worse time than the Timex.
Honda Fit is $15,000, Mercedes is $150,000, Bughatti is $2million whatever.

But analyze what is being said with the term diminishing return. No Sound to a $5 car speaker is 100% gain since you can now hear SOMETHING as opposed to NOTHING. Every dollar you spend after that is a diminishing return because nothing you buy can equal the vast improvement of nothing to something.

Then it's all a matter of subjective opinions as to how much money gets you what improvement. Just like the Honda Fit that gives you long distance transportation that you did not have before just as the cheapest phone allows you to make phone calls.
Or the cheapest camera lets you take pictures. And the cheapest coffee machine makes coffee, and the cheapest toaster toasts toast, and on it goes.

I don't see why audio equipment gets called out. Each of makes a choice but I would say that choice should be based on experience and good experience before one makes a bunch of blanket statements about the appropriate place to stop or where the line is that spending more is pointless.

I am sure some of us have walked through shops and wondered "why the hell would anyone spend that much on that item" - I sure as hell have as I live in Hong Kong where there are handbags that sell for $50,000 and Vertu Smart Phones that sell for $10,000US.

I auditioned the Acapella High Cellini recently at CAS7 and this is a $55,000 loudspeaker. You are simply not getting that level of Sound Quality for $2500. Believe me - I am one of the ultimate cheap asses you will meet and if I could get that sound for $2500 I would already have it. No one on this forum is going to put both the High Cellini and a $2500 speaker (even if you spend $50,000 on room tretments and DSPs and ARC room correction and hire 10 of your favorite engineers to get those $2500 speakers to be as perfect as those speakers can be. Because remember you'd have to do the same too for the High Cellini.

And I can tell you - enter (whatever speaker here) for $2500 and it is NOT going to remotely and I mean REMOTELY capture what the High Cellini captures. You don't need to be some golden ear who listens to frro froo string quartet either - you can take a run of the mill Guns N Roses CD of middling quality and play that. A very good $2500 speaker will play the notes and can be pretty awesome - heck if you play this on the Cerwin Vega CLS215 (a well reviewed CV speaker by the way) it will rock you will feel the drums in the chest and it can be pretty darn good. Then you play it on the High Cellini and it's on another level - the band is there - the separation the high volume impact with crystal clear pin drop speed in the cymbals is just astonishing.

Let's face it - like a Lamborghini, or flying first class the Acapella is likely out of reach for most if not all of us. But we can't bury our heads in the sand and say well - I can't afford it so it is over priced and anyone who spends that is an audiophool. Besides there are a lot of wealthy people out there where $55,000 is no different to them than $20 is to you. And that High Cellini speaker at $55k is near the bottom end of their speaker price range - they have speakers nearing the million range.

There are more people with lots of money than I think people realize. In the US people always talk about the top 1% - well that top 1% numbers over $3,500,000 people. These are the folks who can relatively easily afford to spend $55k on loudspeakers. The same group that can afford the $1million Patek-Philippe watches and a fleet of Bentley's. $55k is chump change to these people.

 

Audio gear gets "called out" because, as you suggested, it's basically free to hear sound and it's been that way since the transistor radio. Unlike the extra money spent for a Mercedes, where the uptick in interior quality alone is obvious, additional spending on audio gear can be dismissed as vanity. A great stereo is not "plug 'n play". And even the fidelity from a well sorted $10,000 system is difficult to appreciate without having the experience of what each component contributed upgrade after upgrade.

 

There is a problem with analogies, they nearly never work. That is why they should be used with great care, and be short.

I used to have a Rolex but it wasn't possible to couple it with my Carlsson speakers, so I sold it.

 

I'm with @murphythecat on this one though I would say a slightly higher number for speakers.

 

One important aspect is the size of the room the components will be used in.

 

Most of my components are medium-range pieces that I bought at yard sales or flea markets for $25 to $50 a pop, from sellers who did not know what they were selling. So I am well below the $2,500 range and am quite happy.

 

Or the type of implementation - active speakers, planar, electrostatics, etc. All have a bearing.

Add in the often unnecessary "upgradeitis" that infects the hobby and the threshold isn't as high as some make out. Whether it's worth it is for the individual to decide!

 

Absolutely. High end in a small listening room won´t be so expensive IMO.

 

I think a well thought out $2500 system (either vinyl or digital, not both), can sound good enough to please 99.9% of the people on the planet but the idea of the diminishing returns is hard to pin down. I do think at that point it becomes difficult to get a meaningful upgrade without spending quite a bit more money. In other words, replacing a good quality $900 dollar CD player with a $1200 dollar one is most likely not going to greatly enhance your listening enjoyment. So in that regard I do think the idea of diminishing returns is correct as long as you don't suggest that a really meaningful upgrade isn't possible with a much larger investment.

 

I personally think that we fail to realise that the 'front-end' of any system is the most important part..Not a Turntable or CD player.But the source recording itself!
Some people happily spend many thousands tying to gain small improvements in sound quality when the vast majority of the time it is flaws in the source recordings that are the weak point.

Everyone could easily pick up a second hand system on ebay for about £150 that would sound superb with well recorded material.Sometimes i think we all forget that loving hi-fi and music is mainly about putting together a system that can play back what is on a disc or LP accurately.Its not a mythical alchemy that needs many thousands spent on it.Unless you seek audio equipment that is also a piece of well made furniture and a status symbol as well as a device for reproducing music accurately.

 

Or 99,99999 percent.

 

I don't forget what my objectives are and I doubt many members here do.

It is wrong to conclude that there is particular dollar threshold for a complete two channel system where the next dollar spent must be related to a mythical end.

None of my gear could be described as "well made furniture" or a "status symbol". Both my $7,000+ pre-amplifier and $10,000 speakers are designed and engineered for the explicit goal of reproducing sound exceedingly well. I'd expect anyone on this forum, including myself, to spend far less if the same quality of sound could be achieved for less.

I wonder how you can justify owning Naim electronics? Do you trust them?

 

But this is an audio hobbyist forum and audiophiles are not interested in the fact that a Bose Wave Radio will please 99.99% of the population.

I am so not a photography guy - I can respect a beautiful photograph but I'm not rushing out to buy a $6000 Camera because it has less barrel distortion and superior colour accuracy to the $1 camera in my S7 Samsung. But I get that people who are photophiles are perturbed by such distortions.

If people really can't hear the difference between elite stereo systems in the 6-7 figure range over $2500 then you're in the wrong hobby and forum. Or as I suspect - you've never actually bothered to listen to this stuff in a properly set-up space. But let's not even go to those lengths - all one has to do is take pretty much any mainstream speaker company that sells to the high end crowd - let's say speakers from ANY of the following companies that are available in MOST U.S./Canada cities. B&W, Paradigm, JBL, Revel, PMC, Legacy Audio, ATC.

It doesn't even have to be a brand you like all that much.

Using B&W as an example - listen to the B&W 703 floorstander for $3,000 pair.

It's a respectable floorstander for the money.



Whether it is your cup of tea isn't really the point - what you do is you say this is a decent example of what $3k buys you.

Then you listen to the B&W Nautilus Loudspeakers ($50,000)


Play a variety of recordings. If you truly can't tell that the latter sounds vastly better from basic stuff like bass midrange, treble, distortion, openness, neutrality, scale, dynamics then you can't be helped. And B&W is not my favorite speaker line - but you can still tell that the latter is leagues and leagues superior to the 703. And that the while the latter has a unique design - that design was in fact led by engineering ideas to improve the sound. It's not just made for looks.

 

There is no bright line here. We have so many different perspectives, for good reason. The "test" to me is whether I forget about the equipment and get drawn into the performance. That's the objective in my estimation. If a given system does that for you, be happy.

 

What is Your point? Besides writing a lot.

 

What I got from his writings is that unless one already heard/experienced multiple high end setups in good rooms, the person who criticizing audiophiles as audiofools is actually making himself sounds like a fool.

 

I have no idea. Should we care if someone thinks some components are better that others. Anyhow it has nothing to do with the subject.