2. Law of diminishing return apply to both audio and wine.
100$ wine is not 10 times better than 10$ wine.
One time out to dinner with some friends on a trip we had this one guy fancied himself a wine expert made a big deal asking the wine steward all kinds of questions. Well big deal for America. In France probably would have been like nothing. Anyway they go on and on, what are we eating, what about this one, okay, but this vintage or..... then the one he orders for the table is like ten bucks a head, and a lot of heads, so hardly a dribble of wine.
How in the world any wine is worth like $100 a bottle.... let alone what this one cost.. $120? $150? .... and this was years ago, back when whatever amount of money it was then would actually buy you something....
So then they bring it and pour it and I am at this point (again, this was years ago) no big wine guy but I'll be damned if that wine didn't actually LOOK better. I mean just sitting there in the glass, damn! How is this even possible???
My nose is pretty bad from allergies and my bad choice of parents or whatever and yet somehow good enough to notice it even smells fabulous. And while I'm no wine expert its not like I'm used to box wine either, I've been to wineries, sampled, tend to buy pretty decent stuff, but not like this.
Finally a taste and damn again, ambrosia! Bad as I wanted to make it last couldn't stop drinking it either. Well I mean when it goes so good with the dinner it was almost like some drug. Bite of steak, sip of wine, ahhhh!
Bottle of course is gone. Only now I have a problem. Because I want to order a bottle. And my wife is kicking me. Because its so expensive. Like I care. This stuff is GOOD!
So I would say yes indeed wine is like stereo. Only its not quite true this business of diminishing returns. Oh, maybe in some statistical generic sense it is. But we go case by case. ;) On that basis it turns out sometimes returns are the opposite of diminishing. Sometimes you really do get what you pay for.