Law of Accelerated Returns

If anyone bothers to read my posts I have been rallying against the concept of diminishing returns.

Just today I posted about a $95 ethernet cable purchase (2 cables) hoping it makes a nice upgrade.

If the cables (when they arrive) make just a 1 percent improvement, in my system, that would be around a $1000 benefit. Other upgrades are free, like a cleaning tube sockets, or low cost tweaks like a new AC power outlet.

In a lesser system these upgrades might not be audible, but in a high end system the entire experience can be bettered by some inexpensive or modest upgrade.

While my thesis might be flawed in some ways, my point it that the benefits stack up and pays dividends.

@jerryg123 who has apparently left us brings us a good point which I'd like to elaborate upon.

There have been several times in my audio journey when I listened to a system that was beyond my ability to fully process it.  Over time and with experience, our brain fine tunes itself to discern the differences in fidelity.  

The differences I hear in my system to a non audiophile might be difficult for them to hear.  When I point things out, sometimes they can hear it, sometimes not.

So perhaps the law of diminishing returns also plays into not yet having the developed palate to hear the full differences.

I posted about this previously, but I recently evaluated high end shotgun mics for my film shoots.  

Schoeps make a full size and smaller size of the mic I just purchased.  The smaller mic has the same capsule but different electronics.  Common wisdom in the pro audio world (and manufacturer) is that they sound the same, just without the filter switches.   However,  to my ear I could easily tell the difference in the side by side comparison.  The larger electronics with higher current sounds clearly more dynamic to me.

If I didn't have the experience from listening to high end audio (and a lot of live music,) perhaps I wouldn't have been able to hear what pretty much no one else on the pro audio world

I just posted in the ONTI Cat8 cable thread about what 2 ethernet cables for a total of 95$ did for my system.

Looking at the nice chart @lanx0003 created, my observation is that inexpensive (or not so inexpensive) upgrades take that Diminishing flatter part of the curve and lift it up again.  

I can’t say for sure, but I imagine these cat 8 cables wouldn’t have made such an audible improvement in the lesser priced system.

That being said, I do believe I’d have to spend a hell of a lot more money to better my BHK300 amps (with NOS tubes) but that’s because they’re sold by a more mass market company with simple casework shared among other components. 

@sokogear Why would you think spending double on a speaker would yield a very small improvement?  I would think if chosen well, it would be a large improvement.  
 

Plus we all know a system is the sum of its parts, and small benefits stack up and should amplify each other.  A speaker cable that is 20% better than another is letting you hear 20% more of each of the upstream components.  I’m not sure mathematically my point works, but you get the idea.

The significant increase in spooky realism of a singer being in the room I got from my recent cheap Ethernet cable upgrade didn’t come from nowhere.  The benefit came from all the other money spent around it.

I’m not saying it’s a linear or even a truly quantifiable thing, or that every upgrade will provide the same level of improvement.  

Also one may think that for example two amps sound similar, but a much more revealing speaker may make the difference more audible and reveal a character  that wasn’t heard previously. 

While acoustics are important, a real instrument no matter what acoustic environment it is played in, is easily identifiable as a real instrument. Acoustics can’t create dynamics, timbre, leading edge, inner detail, bandwidth or fidelity. 

A talented musician I know plays a very crappy acoustic guitar they painted on.  It doesn’t matter where she plays it, it’s a tinny, brittle sounding instrument.  
 

My system’s gear has been stable over many years.

I always thought my system just wasn’t capable of portraying large scale orchestras. Maybe the stand mount speaker with an 8” woofer and subs with 10” woofer was too small, or the room too large. (28x30x about 14’ high)
Maybe the cones were reaching break up, or the amp wasn’t powerful enough.

But over the last year I’ve done some minor upgrades. One being some inexpensive speaker cables from Underwood Hifi, (the diamond and gold, in Biwire application). I also cleaned the tube pins and sockets in my preamp which hasn’t been done in some time. The most recent addition was the $95 (for two) cat8 Ethernet cables I previously posted about.

Listening to the Rachmaninov symphonic dances on Athena Records 24/96 aif files tonight, I realized the system can now indeed do large scale symphonies. Sure maybe not as well as one of the large Wilson’s, Magico, YG, etc, but certainly the system is now in a new class.

Total cost of upgrades were about $750. I’d call that an accelerating return, or at least not a diminishing one.   I could also throw the $650 EtherRegen added a couple of years ago in there as one of the upgrades, but still total, a very small percentage of the system cost that made a vastly better system.