For those of us who are not solely constrained by not being billionaires, how do we individually find our place where either the law of diminishing returns or the importance of other audio factors negates going further up the technical reproduction food chain? I mean this as a question of the dominance of factors outside our control rendering further refinement of our system and listening area unimportant or even below audibility. More of a technical question than an aesthetic one. This is not a "if you are happy with the sound then it is the right system for you" discussion.

I may usually set the line of demarcation lower than some. For me, my gear can only strive to present what is on the recording as resolved and euphonia free as possible. (If you seek a particular presentation that deliberately deviates from what is on the recording, feel free to join the discussion, but that is a separate inquiry. So please state your position up front. I am very interested in how one could reconcile purposefully deviating from the recording while still seeking to improve the accuracy of the system.) I see a fork in the road even at this beginning, because one might not see the recording process as a limiting factor, but rather another "instrument" that is played to get a particular sound or presentation. Myself, I think of my audio reproduction system's job as giving me the most accurate version of the recording. So I don't concern myself with that.

So...Where I see the demarcation is where the limitations of recording, which do vary in each example of it, become large enough to render further attempts to refine the reproduction of it unproductive or even useless. Certain to contribute only inaudible or less accurate differences.

But here I see another fork, sort of. You have probably experienced that some systems that are very revealing get the very last bit of information to you but end up at some point being a catalog of warts, while others seem to be quite forgiving as they offer more resolution while still seeming to mine every last nit on the recording. While the latter situation is probably the product of some frequency anomalies, it can enhance the listening experience compared to using lesser systems. I happen to have representatives of both types here and am not inclined to get rid of either. The extreme here would be a super system that only sounds good on a handful of recordings. I have always believed that tailoring your listening to recording quality rather than how good the music is, is a fundamental cart before the horse result. Listening to the equipment instead of the music. My goal is to get the best I can out of all the music I want to listen to, not to hear how great my gear sounds with perfect recordings. This in itself indicate a possible stopping place beyond which "going overboard" exists.

So that is where I stand, still with choices that have nothing to do with having different gear for different genres of music, but rather to cater to two different Weltbilder. At this point I am very satisfied with the way things sound. Really satisfied. But with my speaker systems, my quandary is since I heard the presentation of the MBL system in Chicago at AXPONA, I might just value that as highly as other definitions of what a "better" speaker is.