Price versus Performance

If you're happy with the purchase, the price was good for the performance.

For anything in the low and mid-range, it's impossible to really gauge what headphone has the best price for its performance, because they all sound very different. Grado SR60i is considered a great bargain, but if you don't like the sound signature it isn't worth it. AD700 is great but maybe someone needs more bass. AKG K701 is one of the most technically impressive headphones in the mid-fi range, but once you factor in amp costs it's not really mid-fi anymore. You just need to get what works best for you at a price you're most comfortable with.

Not to mention it's impossible to gauge gains in audio performance the same way as the price. Price is quantitative. You can say that $300 is 100% more than $150. You can't put a percentage on audio performance because it's not all about numbers. Is my B-stock HF2 450% better than my SR60i? Is my SR60i 600% better than my KSC75? It's impossible to say, but I can still confidently say that I'm happy with all three purchases.

So subjective... It all depends how rich you are how much of an investment a 1500$ headphone is over a 300$ as well.

Price is important. I am definiatly have a bias for cheap gear that sounds good over overly expensive and flashy gear that look good but don´t necessarily sound better just different. On the other hand I just buy headphones I can afford so if that uber expensive headphones perform well enough to keep or give something unique I am satisfied anyway lol

My impression is that there is most often a strong correlation between price and performance. With exceptions of course.
But above a certain price point you tend to get less additional performance per $$. Hence a $1500 unit is not 5x as great as a $300 unit.

I would say that you could definitely compare the price/performance ratio of headphones to a regression of a logarithmic function, where x is money spent and y is sound quality. Technically then the sweet spot would be right around f(x)=0, but us head-fiers tend to go further than that.



As you pay more money, you get better sound quality. As you move forward though, the sound quality improvement per dollar is decreased.

Incremental gains for exponential cost increases. The law of diminishing returns. The yield curve. All of which boils down to it's worth it if you're willing to pay for it.

What we have to remember is that not everything expensive is based on the performance of the unit. There are some big brand names which demand a significantly higher price. These fellas destroy the idea of diminishing returns as you might get no return for the extra cash unit.

Overall, everyone has a limit. To me, paying more than 1k on something makes me uncomfortable. For others it is 400. This is not solely attributed to the level of income either.

The challenge with high end audio in my view, is to have enough experience in order to have a mental image/benchmark as to what defines "Good", "Great" etc. and what this costs, and it is an expensive hobby to learn this. I would contrast this with a hobby like wine, where $1,000-$2,000 per bottle at the most gets you into very rarified territory, and then it is pretty easy to determine cost vs performance. As we know that's relatively speaking 'peanuts' in terms of the cost of high end audio.

my view on this hobby is invest a couple thousand in it and then just shift it around (sell/buy) as your tastes or interests change.

I don't disagree with you, that makes sense based on having a budget for this hobby, but to me, it would be nice knowing, for example, that one has 60% say of what is possible in a headphones-based rig for ...picking a number, $2,500, rather than just not knowing if its 20% or 70%. Just a thought.

In years of climbing the ladder of audio you find that certain price points bring you a larger % of "Good" or "Great" components. You are more likely to find a sound to your liking in this range. Once you identify that sound you can start listening to lesser priced units to see what gets closest to that sound. Problem in this hobby is headphone amps. There are not many products made with published specs by large manufacturers. It's been a hobby industry. The lack of knowledge puts the buyer in a vulnerable position.

I've found $1000 up per component (less headphones) starts getting you consistent performance. I've found my happy point to be about $2-2.5k each for amp, pre, source. Careful shopping will get you the average $5-10k sound. I've still to find an appropriate source as DACs sonic improvements aren't that big over older units until you get into some serious cash. You can get a pretty good deal on old, quality dacs. I'm still learning hps.

While not absolute, you can find a price/performance point for your tastes to have some correlation.

Of course IMO.

Of course there are exceptions.
But I say that the law of diminishing returns most often explain the picture.

I used to agree with the notion of diminishing returns, but lately I'm more inclined to believe that the lack of education/information or ability to listen to detail may lead to individuals pushing for diminishing returns rather than a direct correlation between price and performance. Take for example things that sound odd or different at high price ranges (eg. gs1000's). A lot of users question them and go on to "bash" the product simply because other products out perform them at a lower price and sound better, but if your tastes and ability to discern music are truly up there, you would be able to point out what's different with the gear and really see the quality behind it. Its like the first time a person listens to a pair of bose and a pair of sennheisers at the same price point. Your casual listener who's grown up to mainly pop and rock over the radio will go with bose time and time again. But anyone who's tastes have acquired a greater breadth of knowledge regarding how music sounds through live performances or higher end systems will lean towards the sennheisers. This isn't to bash bose and praise sennheiser, rather to show that a person's past experiences and ability to discern music will affect at how they look at price versus performance. Its easy for us to claim that it's really just about different preferences but to be honest if that were true, none of the big name companies would still exist today (akg, sennheiser, beyerdynamic), let alone a company like grado who sells products that sound remarkably the same at very high prices.

I think a good book that really deals with this type of info is "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell. Read the section on how experts think and distinguish different kinds of food/wine etc... He goes into great detail about an expert versus a novice's ability to pick out certain characteristics in anything. He points out that while the novice may have 10 words or so to describe a product, the expert may have well over 90 or a hundred. The section regarding food and even soda are particularly illuminating.

So to sum up, it isn't that the product has diminishing returns, its the listern's inability to really understand and hear what is being played. Anyone on head-fi who's been here long enough knows that 30 days isn't long enough to really determine the merits of a new pair of headphones, let alone the week or so that a lot of reviewers seem to think is good enough. Most members who have been here long enough have formed very good opinions on products after months of owning them and carefully listening to them. Trust your ears, but only as far as you can understand what they are telling you -otherwise get a pair of apple ibuds and tell your ears what you want them to hear.