diminishing returns...and hearing

For my 18th birthday, my parents bought me my very first Hi-Fi system.  It was a Marantz system consisting of a turntable, amp, cassette deck, tuner and speakers.

Listening to it for the first time I was amazed.  The difference between it and our old music centre was like night and day.

When setting the system up, there was no internet back then to give tips on where to place your speakers, etc., so I bought a Hi-Fi magazine.  This was my first mistake!  I learned not just about speaker placement, but also about speaker stands, cables, equipment racks and about how all these seemingly ancillary things could affect your system's sound.

But as I had no money I did my best to place the speakers onto bookshelves at around the right height, and continued to enjoy listening to my records.

And so it was for many years.  Until around 6 years later and CDs became the in thing. Now, I had a little money saved up and went into my local Hi-Fi shop to gaze in awe at the myriad boxes of electronics on offer.

All I wanted though was a CD player, a new amp, some speakers and stands to put them on together with nice cables to connect all the bits.  I booked an appointment to listen to various things and a couple of days later I found myself in the shop's dedicated listening room.

What I heard blew my mind again.  The sound stage the equipment produced was huge, and sound seemed to come from outside the range of the speakers, and instruments were more separated making the music I loved come alive even more than it did on my 18th birthday.

So, I decided on what I wanted to buy there and then.

Then the assistant told me that the next listening appointment had been cancelled, and would I like to listen to some more gear.  Of course I did, and he hooked up what he said was the most expensive system they had in the shop, consisting of boxes from all different Hi-Fi manufacturers.  He connected it all together with really expensive cables and I sat back preparing to be literally blown away.

I wasn't!

While my new friend was extolling the virtues of the over £50,000 worth of equipment, I was struggling to hear any difference at all.  To me, it all sounded just the same.  Nice, powerful, detailed of course; but no different to the system I'd just bought for around £49,000 less!

I nodded appreciatively before leaving thinking that there must be something wrong with my ears.  There wasn't.

Now, I'm not going to have a go at people who spend ridiculous amounts of money on a cable because it sounds better.  Each to their own, and they're not harming anyone (as long as they can afford the stuff that is).  But I think there must be a quite sharp and sudden law of diminishing returns in play here.  Either that or the whole high-end H-Fi industry is built on foundations of sand, and a reliance on people believing what they're being told.

Emperor's new clothes and all that!

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