Inverted law of diminishing returns?

[Macca]

So you basically get what you pay for.

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I'd suggest that of all the things you can buy hi-fi is the area where there is the most chance of not getting what you think you are paying for. There's a lot of very over-priced equipment out there. (In terms of price vs performance).

[paulf-2007]

You've managed to ignore one of the most important aspect of good engineering -- quality control. Yes, it is possible to come up with good design with not much more money than bad design, but to implement it properly, you need to pony up some serious cash. And that's where we enter the pricey hi fi territory. Most of us have seen some pretty decent gear that sells for cheap and ships from China, but buying such items is a dicey game -- you may or may not luck out and get a well assembled piece. Or you may get a shoddily assembled piece, which breaks down after few hours/days.

So you basically get what you pay for.

Also, performance is a very broad category. Does it perform any better? Depending on perform what? A mini van performs better than a Ferrari when it comes to transporting a family from one place to another. Ferrari, on the other hand, performs better when it comes to rolling down the street turning heads.

Alex, we could be fit a couple of uk mini vans inside one of your mini vans. I'm off to listen to some music.

[magiccarpetride]

I did say it's a matter of opinion but I'll give an example to illustrate why I take the stance I do.
There's a well-known audiophile who used to make a very good living from an advert in the magazines that said "new amps for old". Basically, he would take Naim amps and address their design flaws. With just a few resistors and capacitors - and not particularly expensive ones - he would transform the performance of the amps. Of course, it's time-consuming to do those modifications and I don't think he over-charged for the work, but if Naim had implemented those aspects to the design in the first place it wouldn't have made their amps any more expensive at all.
More generally, electronics is a field where a bad circuit is just as expensive to produce as a good circuit - or a good circuit no more expensive than a bad one, if you prefer it that way round. Changing the value of a few resistors can make a huge difference and it doesn't cost anything. You just have to know what you're doing.

Loudspeakers are another example. A box that's the wrong size or a port that's the wrong length isn't any cheaper to produce than correctly sized ones. The performance depends on getting the design right, and the right dimensions cost no more than the wrong ones.

However, I will admit that things like tonearms may be a different matter. Precision engineering aluminium/brass/steel to high tolerances is probably one area where more money spent yields better performance.

That's a very good point. But again, my contention is that it is one thing to tweak and improve a component in one's home, and a completely different thing to mass produce that same component. Mass production is riddled with its own issues, hence the need for stringent quality control. And that process costs a lot of money. The cost is then being passed on to the consumer.

[Sherwood]

I think the concept of diminishing returns may have originated in the field of economics but has now become accepted language in the wider world to mean "pay increasing amounts of money for ever diminishing benefits". In that respect it's similar to the term "critical mass" which originated in the field of nuclear physics but is now a widely used phrase meaning "big enough to become viable" or "big enough to become self-sustaining".
Thanks for explaining the origins of the term diminishing returns - I wasn't aware of them - but language evolves.

Andrew,

You are correct in saying, that DMR, like many technical terms, has entered into common usage, critical mass being a good example. In some cases, the migration is better than others in preserving the original meaning. For example, the term "decimation" is now used to describe a massive reduction in capacity or effectiveness (e.g. the decimation of our fish stocks; the team was decimated by injuries; our industry has been decimated by foreign imports). Originally, the term applied to the symbolic punishment of one in ten soldiers in lieu of punishment of the whole group (hence decimate for one in ten). Nowadays, the term is generally taken to refer to a greater reduction of capacity than a mere 10%. I mention this only because I am a big fan of George Orwell and Ernest Gowers in advocating plain writing. Metaphors and unnecessary jargon are best avoided. In this case, the concept was just not relevant to the situation, even in modern usage.

... and on that note I end my sermon!

Geoff

[Pharos]

The supposedly intellectual posts were up to a point very interesting, but I think the English a little clumsy which sabotaged my comprehension. I'll try again tomorrow.

Seems to me that metaphors are an odd animal, and which can take us away from a rigorous understanding; I am dumfounded that looking at different things in a different sphere can apparently further our understanding in the one we are dealing with.

It is vital to ordinate money in design to place it where it is most beneficial to the effectiveness of final result, and possible to waste it on irrelevance. I question Magico's use of airframe tolerances in their speaker cabinets; is that really an appropriate use of technology?

[Macca]

The supposedly intellectual posts were up to a point very interesting, but I think the English a little clumsy which sabotaged my comprehension. I'll try again tomorrow.

Seems to me that metaphors are an odd animal, and which can take us away from a rigorous understanding; I am dumfounded that looking at different things in a different sphere can apparently further our understanding in the one we are dealing with.

It is vital to ordinate money in design to place it where it is most beneficial to the effectiveness of final result, and possible to waste it on irrelevance. I question Magico's use of airframe tolerances in their speaker cabinets; is that really an appropriate use of technology?

This what I was saying. Of course it is not going to make any difference but it looks great in the sales brochure. Hi-fi is full of this sort of thing.

Cars are not so different. One US manufacturer discovered about 20 years ago that it was losing sales to a rival. The reason? The rival had more cup holders, and one of the first questions people would ask when they came to look at the car in the showroom was 'How many cup holders does it have?'

People who buy cars based solely on the driving performance, and people who buy hi-fi purely on the sound quality, are very rare. So rare that the manufacturers have no interest in them as a demographic.

[walpurgis]

There is apparently, a 'law of diminishing interest'.