Law of Accelerated Returns

@ghdprentice , It is not so much a matter of diminishing returns as it is value.

There is equipment that is a much better value than other equipment of similar performance. Much of this "value" equipment is still plenty expensive. There is a category of "Luxury" HiFi made purely for very rich people who have to drive a Rolls or have it driven for them. Much of this equipment is needlessly complex and over built with things like 300 lb CNCed chassis. I put that stuff in the same category as a Rolex watch. An Apple watch is more accurate and you can put a Mickey Mouse dial on it. You can see Rolex watch wearers a mile away. Their left arm is two inches longer. 

Media people have to extoll the virtues of ultra expensive equipment. It is their job to do so and their revenue depends on it. 

If it costs more it sounds better because it costs more. Many media people have this programing. They did not experience the lowly Roger's LS3 5A

Lastly, we frequently view the past with rose colored glasses. I fondly remember several systems. They were excellent in their day but I shudder to think what they would sound like today.

@mapman 1+++! That is essence is the problem. Very few systems including the ultra expensive ones can produce a SOTA performance. They can be VERY impressive compared to the usual and they can have very balanced tonality and excellent timbre but they do not image at the level available on many recordings.

Many think they have a great image because they hear the guitar over there and the bass in the middle and a cymbal to the left. They can even tell that the cymbal is behind the other instruments thinking they have "3D' imaging. Performing at this level is not all that difficult and can be achieved by pretty much any serious audiophile as they have heard other systems perform at this level and know what they should be looking for. Imaging the third dimension means placing an image in space that has location and depth/size. Imagine you can walk around the image of that trumpet or piano, the third dimension is not the size of the venue it is producing instruments and voices with depth. The instrument and voice have 3 dimensions. 

IMHE this is the hardest characteristic to reproduce. Energy created by the room and reflections blur out the third dimension. Channels that have different amplitude and impulse patterns also blur out the third dimension. These three problems compromise at least 90% of the systems out there. Some speaker/rooms will never be able to perform at this level. Others can but are not adjusted correctly. Only by luck can you get this out of the box and only the very misinformed are going to get there by placing little discs next the their interconnects. Do you have to spend a lot of money? Depends what you think a lot of money is. I think you can get there at a lower volume for maybe $50K. The full Monty takes at least $100K for a system with a turntable. Many are spending $250K just for speakers. The most reliable way to get there is with someone who has a lot of measurement equipment and knows what they are doing. As I have said before, it is exactly the same as video projectors. No projector will project colors correctly out of the box. It has to be calibrated and requires a lot of knowledge and expensive equipment. Some projectors, like the one I just bought, will never get it right because they can not do black. You only get shades of gray out of them. Live and learn.   

Listening to The Arctic Monkey's At the Albert Hall. This is a FN GREAT record!

@jbhiller , as you noticed, after a point price has little to do with it. Regardless of price the majority of systems are never going to perform at SOTA levels in the rooms they are in without analysis, room treatment and digital correction. Now I'm in for it. 

@mapman , That omnidirectional thing died decades ago. Speakers with controlled directivity will out perform omni directional speakers in most rooms as they create fewer early reflections. The outlier is bass because it is virtually impossible to control directivity at low frequencies and the resultant nodal behavior can be difficult (impossible?) to ameliorate.  

@torquerulesok , that is an excuse for not being an audiophile. It is not all about who has the largest member. It is about audio performance and nothing else. People like you are music lovers but not audiophiles. This is not meant to be a derogatory comment. Being so certainly makes for a more peaceful existence.   

Rolex watches are all about demonstrating your superiority. As a watch collector you know there are much nicer watches than Rolex, Patek Philippe, Blancpain and Jaquet Droz come to mind. Watches can be extraordinarily beautiful devices, Rolex's are not. ( that, of coarse is an opinion.)

Trying to tune your system with cables is at best a multiplication of errors and at worst a frightful waste of money.

It is all relative. To us regular folks a $250K amplifier is nuts but, to a billionaire it is chump change. To them buying a Parasound would be equivalent to a 911 fan buying a Toyota Corolla. Both get you from A to B and the Toyota is much more reliable. Rich people who want to be really cool buy a Prius. It use to be Volovo drivers that were always getting in your way. That role has been taken over by the Prius and Honda CRV. Why is it that these people are never in a hurry?