The law of diminshing returns?

As written , @ghdprentice post doesn’t deny that there is an asymptote, but rather that some individuals are willing to spend limitless amounts of money to get every last drop of sonic benefit.

  Those people are entitled to do that and I am not being critical.  However many of us believe that the biggest improvement occurs when one gets out of budget gear and ascends into the low high end.  Past that improvement is audible but the value equation becomes less favorable.  Whether or not this matters to a given individual is a personal choice 

This kind of article is there just to increase traffic and discussion in the forums.

The same guy wrote a 12k$ DAC review recently with the opposite conclusion. Don't buy a 200$dac if you have a high end system...

https://hometheaterhifi.com/reviews/dac/emm-labs-ma3i-digital-to-analog-converter-review/

His conclusions:

The EMM Labs MA3i D/A Converter is a superb electrical engineering accomplishment. Its standout feature is vanishingly low harmonic distortion. Remember, though, what gets to the speakers is limited by the highest distortion component in the signal chain, including the speakers, for that matter. If you obtain a DAC of this quality, you need to be sure your other components are worthy. And, if your other components are really high-end, don’t buy a $200 DAC.

@ghdprentice 

+1 ….. bigtime.

”Price is what you pay. Value is what you get,”

- Warren Buffet

I'd suggest that the law of diminishing returns almost always applies but that the  breakpoints are highly individual and driven based on how much value is placed on audio (preferences) and resources.  If you don't value audio, then spending $2k on a system may be a waste relative to your bluetooth speaker.  If you really value audio but have have limited resources, then perhaps you can justify buying a $3k integrated but not $8k in separates.  If you are Jeff Bezos and you value audio, no big deal to buy a $90k PC (but you may pass on that audio barrier breaking new $1 billion amp as you'd get more personal utility value out of a another yacht).  

The law of diminishing returns applies to most everything after a certain price point or engineering level. That is not unique to Audio equipment.

Thus, rehashing this tired statement feels to me meaningless.

Credit to the author of the article who actually in a structured way breaks down why digital to analog conversion is a LOT more than just the DAC chip itself. (Not to mention that some higher-end DACs don't use an off-the-shelf DAC chip at all, but use other D-to-A implementation technologies.)

But what does a statement like "A $20,000 DAC doesn’t deliver 20× the objective performance of a $1,000 DAC — physics doesn’t allow that. Shocking, I know." add to the conversation?

I think we all understand that a $300k Porsche does not go 10x faster than a $30k Subaru, nor does it cut down to 1/10th the time to get your dinner pick up order or get to the grocery store.

What else is new?