We all know the law of diminishing returns -- after certain level of quality has been reached, further investments in improving the quality will yield lesser and lesser and lesser returns. Until it reaches such plateau where even enormous investment does not make one iota of improvement.
Applied to hi fi, this law holds that once we purchase relatively high quality equipment (decent turntable, arm, cartridge, phono, preamp, amp, speakers, interconnects, power cables, speaker cables etc.), spending more money on any individual component will not bring us as great of an improvement as we've got when we've upgraded from the ho-hum mid-brow equipment to the more advanced equipment.
But I'd be prepared to challenge that thinking. I recently got a hunch that, once we reach certain level of quality in audio equipment, upgrading any component tends to yield much more dramatic improvements than if we were to upgrade that same component back when we had a mediocre, ho-hum system.
For example, after I've built a pretty decent hi fi system, I reached a point where I felt there isn't much more I could do to improve the quality of the sound. Then, for a lark, I ordered Jelco tonearm to replace my Rega RB300 tonearm. I was certain that the differences between Rega and Jelco will be minimal, if not negligible. But much to my pleasant (nay, delirious) surprise, Jelco elevated my entire audio chain to a whole new level. This upgrade (paid double the price of Rega) improved the quality of sound manifold (meaning, much more than double).
So in the end, I'm .....
Continues HERE
