Headphones

I disagree, it's a stupid quip that people use to justify the point at which they bow out of the hobby. Financial constraints are typically the driving factor here, let's not sugarcoat it. You could take away my nice gear and leave me with a pair of HE400i's and Truthear Zero's and I'd still love listening to music just the same. The difference between music and no music is too large to try and use a metric like this.

There is no German equivalent of that phrase? You guys have a phrase for everything! What the hell. Lol

I’m German, English is my second language, and there isn’t really a German phrase for this concep

There is. It's "Leica"

It definitely comes into play with pretty much any “gear” related hobby, from headphones and speakers, to musical instrument gear, to making a car go faster. Guitar players spend tons of money trying to get that little extra something special in their sound.

It’s unfortunate from a few angles. 1) you spend less time enjoying the stuff that is already plenty good, instead fretting about how it could be better, researching, reading, and otherwise not doing the hobby that one claims to be so interested in. 2) it’s a big waste of money. Some people have a lot of money, but tons of people over extend themselves financially on their hobbies, for increasingly minor ‘improvements’. 3) it can feed a consumerist and elitist mindset in other areas on one’s life. If I’m so discerning about hobby x, then I must be very smart and have great taste, and will need to spend a lot of money in other stuff too.

Diminishing returns is most tangible to me with music instruments, of which I’m most familiar with guitar gear and synthesizer. Everyone Really knows that actually practicing / recording / sing writing is the most important thing to “sounding good”, but it’s a lot easier to obsess about how to spend another $200 or $2,000 and Then I’ll finally feel comfortable and actually write a song.

It’s a little less obviously dumb with headphones, but just listen to music. I know a ton of people on here use AirPods more than anything else because they are convenient and sound fine.

I agree with this, value is very subjective. This comes up with cars a lot too. A Rolls Royce is double the cost of a Mercedes S-Class, whether it’s double the car is debatable but for the people that can afford and want the Rolls, they won’t settle for less.

I think of it more as the sunk cost fallacy.

You've just proved the point in your example. 5% difference in the right direction for twice the cost. That is the definition of a diminishing return, regardless of the happiness of the user. It is not a negative thing, it is just a fact which is true of the high-end of anything.

Yes there are diminishing returns. But sometimes people feel that 5-10% performance worth 2x increase In price.

Also everyone point of satisfaction is different, because garbage 3 dollar earphone is much higher price to performance ratio than 20 dollar IEM gem like TE Zero.

Someone does not want to spend more than $20 because diminishing returns, some one spends no more than $300 because diminishing returns. Someone spends $4000 because fuck it.

I think there are two different aspects at play here with "diminishing returns". First, there's the "objective" evaluation that others have mentioned. Spending twice the money won't give you a soundstage that's twice as wide, for example. Twice the money won't get you headphones that give you twice as many details. So in terms of these "technical" attributes, there are diminishing returns on how much more of any one quality you can get from spending more money.

On the other side, there's another subjective factor working against these "diminishing returns". I'm sure there's a psychology term for it, but I'll call it "the princess and the pea" effect. It comes from the fairy tale of the princess and the pea, with the idea being that a princess raised in luxury and comfy beds would find even a single pea under her mattress to be uncomfortable, while a person raised in normal circumstances with average beds wouldn't notice that pea. Once someone is beyond the point of diminishing returns, what often happens is that the small objective differences in performance make large differences in that person's enjoyment. That's where those 5% differences will make or break someone's enjoyment of a headphone.

My most recent example of that pea effect is when trying out the Stax SR-X9000 vs the Dan Clark Audio Corina at Capital AudioFest. Both of those headphones are extremely good. If I were to compare them side-by-side in any "objective" quality, they'd come out pretty close. But the Stax was just ever so slightly more open and layered in its positioning and imaging of sounds, and ever so slightly more reverberant with the trailing ends of notes, and slightly more relaxed and airier in its tuning, such that I found it significantly more enjoyable than the Corina. Again, they aren't that different in absolute performance levels, but in terms of my personal enjoyment of music, it wasn't even a contest, I'd pick the Stax every day and twice on Sunday (another funny English phrase).

there isn’t really a German phrase for this concept that would be on everyone’s mind when talking about this concept like ‘diminishing returns’ seems to be.

Every Germans own Sennheiser HE-1 confirmed???

Diminishing returns happen at a dollar amount that's directly proportional to your disposable income.

In my opinion, the problem with a lot of these comparisons for diminishing returns is there is no set value that correlates to the sound quality you are getting. Meaning:

• Not all $10 headphones are the same as each other
• Not all $100 headphones are the same as each other
• Not all $1000 headphones are the same as each other
• Etc. etc. etc.

So whenever people say "I bought $xxx price-tier of headphones", it is literally meaningless, unless they also state exactly which headphones they have in hand.

Until there is some sort of objective grading system to correlate quality with pricing (i.e. A-tier is $1000+, B-tier is $500+, C=tier is $250+, etc.), the concept of value for dollar is always going to be highly subjective and arbitrary. Not to mention, with inflation, the scale would also need to be readjusted on a yearly basis - much like tax brackets.

Not always subjective. Often not just material goods but things like software, games etc. achieve very close to what the more expensive, and /or newer thing will give you in degrees that are measurable.

I haven’t written down the exact count but I’d bet that 94% of the times I saw “diminishing returns” in a post/comment/video/whatever in any existing niche in life those people were actually “trying” to say opportunity cost.

Well point of diminishing return = abnehmender Ertragszuwachs

The law of diminishing returns is an economic principle stating that as investment in a particular area increases, the rate of profit from that investment, after a certain point, cannot continue to increase if other variables remain at a constant.

Diminishing returns don't exist because "better" isn't quantifiable: wtf is "5% better" or "80% better" of something that doesn't have a quantity associated with it?

It’s only subjective because people use it wrong to suit their own preferred narrative. People will say something like “diminishing returns kick in after $500.” But that’s not really true. Returns start to diminish immediately. It’s a curve. $10 are infinitely better than not having headphones. $50 headphones are much better than the $10. $100 headphones are better than the $50. $250 headphones are better than $50. This continues on all the way up the ladder. It’s up to you to decide where the price premium for the next step up is no longer worth it to you.

that's why I shop stuff I only demo'ed and really like. and i will soon buy my 4 digit headphone (heddphone two) because when i tried it at canjam london, i just sat there grinning like an idiot and being blown away. I am able to afford it with my christmas bonus, so i am getting it. My opinion on the hobby is that the price tag is irrelevant to the decision of it being good. YOU need to like it. YOU need to think it's a justified purchase. The opinion of others doesn't matter

i think the concept correlates to if a headphone is twice as expensive it needs to perform twice as better as its cheaper alternative, if its only 5 percent then you get "diminished returns"

There has to be a German term for it, I’d imagine you’d just have to figure out what it is.

But it’s a concept that’s used in academics so it definitely exists - it’s an idea from Economics, so I’d look in Econ textbooks/ask Economics majors what it is.

I think among audiophiles the term "diminishing returns" is more for people who are new to the hobby because when they buy their first mid-fi or hi-fi set coming from Airpods or budget IEMs the jump is massive. Then they jump up another tier and the *wow* factor is gone because it's only a 10 or 20% increase from what they already had.

Someone who's been doing this for a long time already knows that improvements are often small and subtle, even if they're expensive. And it really is true for any hobby. You'll hear plenty of people in this sub say anyone who buys an expensive amp is stupid because they all sound the same. I and anyone who listen to these things regularly knows that's not true, but I feel the same way about, say, fancy tires on a car.

I think it just comes down to the individual. At the end of the day, it'll be your money. For some people, a $300-$400 has 99% quality of a 700-1000+ headset. They could even go to $5000 headphones but it's still only a 1% improvement to them. At that point, that's simply diminishing returns and that money spent could be spent elsewhere in life or other hobbies. You can "know" there's better stuff out there, but you can also convince yourself that it's barely noticeable or it's really just something you don't need. You can instead use that money on other enjoyable things in life. It's kinda all mental at the end of the day once you hit a point where your ears might not actually be hearing better anymore and your brain takes over telling you there's better.

It’s in everything

Racecars where you are spending millions to save a 10th to the performance of computers where the flagship components are double the price for like 3% more performance…

At least you can say “Porsche” properly :p

After $1000 I would rather buy speakers

I feel like there are dimishing returns and also elistism where a person who normally buys expensive stuff would be perfectly fine with how a 500 dollar headphone sounded if they did a blind test and didn't know the price.

There is a lot of confirmation bias and also a brain bias when spending money. I've heard great audio at 300 that rivals 2000+ because I listen with my ears, not my eyes or bank. Plenty of people claim (with no measurable proof) that something is better than something else.

This falls under the technical performance (measurable performance) vs. prefered sound signature ( subjective performance).