It's an exponential curve. I've always felt that--and it's true in most things. Everything from houses to cars. You can get a really good performance car reasonable--the Subaru WXsi (think that's the right model number). It's a 5 second car. You can get a really really good sports car for double that. And then you can get some incredible exotic for $100k+ and a McLauren for about 4 times that.
Luxury homes are the same way. $ per square foot goes up dramatically for better everything--but by how much.
Audio is no different, it's a luxury, and it's a combination of what Elizabeth said and to some degree what you want. Some people want a certain look and ergonomics even though they know it may not sound is good dollar for dollar.
What's my personal take on it all? You reach the point of dimenshing returns very fast if you haven't dealt with room acoustics. Of course, that's my own admitedly biased opinion--but I do think it's very true. Once acoustics are dealt with, it's amazing how modest upgrades can make a much more significant difference.
Now, here's a story that I hope you get some entertainment out of. I didn't--and you'll see why. We demoed a PARC unit for a potential customer (one of my dealers actually). As you may know the PARC goes between the amp and pre-amp and thus requires an extra interconnect. In this clients home the bass peaks were a real problem, around 10 db at one point. So the PARC made everything sound so much better it wasn't even close. But the client decided not to buy the PARC at this time, because he didn't want to spend another $11,000 on that extra set of interconnects. I could have put in some really nice $1k interconnects on both ends added the PARC, had far better overall sound, sold the other interconnects and possibly made change--go figure.
Luxury homes are the same way. $ per square foot goes up dramatically for better everything--but by how much.
Audio is no different, it's a luxury, and it's a combination of what Elizabeth said and to some degree what you want. Some people want a certain look and ergonomics even though they know it may not sound is good dollar for dollar.
What's my personal take on it all? You reach the point of dimenshing returns very fast if you haven't dealt with room acoustics. Of course, that's my own admitedly biased opinion--but I do think it's very true. Once acoustics are dealt with, it's amazing how modest upgrades can make a much more significant difference.
Now, here's a story that I hope you get some entertainment out of. I didn't--and you'll see why. We demoed a PARC unit for a potential customer (one of my dealers actually). As you may know the PARC goes between the amp and pre-amp and thus requires an extra interconnect. In this clients home the bass peaks were a real problem, around 10 db at one point. So the PARC made everything sound so much better it wasn't even close. But the client decided not to buy the PARC at this time, because he didn't want to spend another $11,000 on that extra set of interconnects. I could have put in some really nice $1k interconnects on both ends added the PARC, had far better overall sound, sold the other interconnects and possibly made change--go figure.