Law of Accelerating Returns

From the article:

The second reason why The Law of Accelerating Returns applies to an audio system is something Meridian Audio co-founder Bob Stuart calls The Increasing Importance of the Smaller Difference. He posits that humans are naturally inclined to make very fine discriminations, such as differences between two champion dogs of the same breed. Dog aficionados aren’t interested in the differences between dogs and cats, or between different breeds of dogs, or even between mediocre and stellar examples of the same breed, but they are fascinated by the very finest differences among the breed’s elite dogs, some of which are invisible to the untrained eye. The smaller the difference, the greater that difference’s importance to those who care about such things.

I think he's making a valid factual observation, but I also think that the observation does not support the stated conclusion.

I would put it that as reproduced sound more closely approaches the sound of live music, two things occur:

1)Small differences become more perceivable.

2)Perceived differences become more important.

I think that both of these points can be illustrated by considering the situation of two components or systems being compared while using a terrible sounding recording, and then while using a great sounding recording. With the first recording, Garbage A may sound different than Garbage B, but who cares? With the high quality recording, though, differences between the components or systems are likely to be both more perceivable and more important.

None of that means, however, that “the smaller the difference, the greater that difference’s importance to those who care about such things.”

Regards,
-- Al