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Law of Accelerated Returns

I think back over the many decades of pursuing high end audio and I realize some of the most inspirational were listening to state of the art systems. Systems I could never dream of affording. I occasionally would get up early and drive the two hours to Phoenix in hopes of finding no one listening to the state of the art system in “the big room” at one of the four or five high end audio stores there in the early ‘90’s.

One such time I was able to spend over an hour with the most amazing system I have ever heard: Wilson WAAM BAMM (or something like that… all Rowland electronics, Transparent interconnects). The system cost about over $.5 million… now, over a million… although I am sure it is even better (I can’t imagine how)..

 

But listening to that system was so mind blowing… so much better than anything I could conceive of, it just completely changed my expectation of what a system could be. It was orders of magnitude better than anything I had heard.

 

Interestingly, as impressed as I was… I did not want “that” sound, as much as I appreciated it. It still expanded my horizon as to what is possible. That is really important, as it is really easy to make judgments on what you have heard and not realize the possibilities… like never having left the small town in Kansas (no offense).

I keep reading these posts about diminishing returns. That isn’t the way it works. I recently read an article by Robert Harley in The Absolute Sound called the Law of Accelerated Returns that captures the concept perfectly. March 2022 issue. The possibilities in high end audio is incredible. Everyone interested in it in any way deserves to hear what is possible. It is mind expanding. 

 

 

ghdprentice

Showing 2 responses by lanx0003

lanx0003
676 posts
 

Accelerated Return (AR) and Diminished Return (DR) can be illustrated in a logistic graph as shown below.  When applied onto the stereo system, AR often occurs at lower priced system before the linear region where the increase in price yields approximately equally "perceived" performance such as SQ, while DR occurs after that linear region from the higher priced system.  Observiously, this utility curve varies from individual to individual, from rich to poor, and from audiophile to music listener, but in general follows a logistic-growth like pattern.  I personally went from the very bottom of the curve and now got lost / confused somewhere in the DR region.  However, I enjoy every minute / hour being lost in the quest of more refined system.

lanx0003
676 posts
 

Well, that performance / response curve is representation of average human behavior, like all theories.  Like I said, there are many human factors affecting the pattern of the curve.  In the other topics I posted that discussed the DR, I touch on the possibility of "measuring" (or "quantifying") the SQ and, if we could do so, it will help ruling out significant part of human perception disparity and provide us a more objective way for gear evaluation.  Part of the discussion pertains to creating metrics and standard procedure to measure SQ via the measurement of quantifiable psychoacoustic "entropy."  One aspect of theory you might be familiar with relates to analyzing certain types of musical harmonies, such as the even order harmonics give smooth, rich more pleasing sound and odd order harmonics give edgier more exciting sound.  Well, just my 2 cents.

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