The law of diminshing returns?

I think the audiophile ultimately achieves a balance between price and enjoyment quality. 

In that equilibrium is satisfaction- at least for the individual is able to be satisfied.

When people talk about diminishing returns in hifi, what they really mean is that there’s a limit on how much they personally would be prepared to spend on it. That’s fair enough, but it isn’t diminishing returns. 

Diminishing returns can’t apply to hifi systems because it is a quantitative concept. Sound quality is by definition qualitative and there is no standard scale against it can be measured. 

Everybody’s entitled to their opinions on hifi. However, saying there are diminishing returns doesn’t make those opinions any more valid. It’s just an overused cliche that sounds impressive but doesn’t mean very much. 

....and one has to decide when to Stop

'enuff. 😉

It seems very few get the information right stuck and mesmerized  by "pricing" :

Diminishing return "point"  area, or zone, is defined and located by the difference and tension between  the subjective and objective  parameters of acoustics experience and the  subjective and objective parameters of gear design... Not by budget or price...

This is why this principle is real even for Bill Gates buying  a billion dollars system...

Perhaps a million dollars system would have even done better in another room with  a better optimization process....

 We cannot put a price on the ears and intelligence ...

Diminishing returns is not a law but a principle set by  the conditions of experience at play...

But we can ignore this and boast buying a billion system that this principle do not apply to our "majesty"  only to the "poors" unable to afford the experience...

I dont want to be the King walking  without clothes...

@raesco - 

There is another way to look at this all which puts diminishing returns in a very different light. We commonly refer to diminishing returns in relation to cost of a singular things, like a car, or a DAC, or an amp. In the audiophile world, very little in truth separates the differences in sound quality between a very affordable DAC as example, from highly priced offerings. It is the typical case in fact, that the most highly vaunted components offer a mere improvement of perhaps just a single percent and a half over less regarded ones. This one and a half percent of realism gain for the huge amount of dollar spent is what typically informs the phrase, diminishing return, which, for each item, component, or room acoustic correction measure taken alone, may be too small to even detect without A/B/A test listening. The most dedicated audiophile, however, will research as much as possible to ensure the greatest value for the dollar, and who will spend as much as they can possibly afford to pursue the most sophisticated components, connectors, sockets, signal and power cables, power supplies and distributors, isolation devices, grounding solutions - basically every technology they can find and afford for every little delta gain they can manage.

This is where the balance shifts.

You see, each percent and a half realism improvement builds on the previous, the collective weight of which can amount to between fifteen to twenty percent overall gain to effect which can be so profound, the entire chain of improvement can no longer be called a ‘diminishing’ return. And while the value of that total return, in truth, can only be determined by each and every one of us independently, those who have actually heard the deep realism that such combined improvement brought will testify to the disbelief and amazement that was felt with the experience. 

My sense of it is that our hobby is far too profound to be limited by a phrase which applies more to objects evaluated in isolation than the entirety of relationships that an audio system is. 

In friendship - kevin