I would guess it comes as no surprise to a lot of you that I believe tuning is at least 50% of the success of a system. All the great equipment in the world will be only as good as the room, speaker placement, isolation, power supply and cabling. A great example is in my system. Ive had the luxury of complete symmetry in my system for the past five months (sense the Bubble Wrap) and have had no desire to mess with anything. Over Christmas I rented a cable burner to burn all my cables, this made some good changes, but also altered the ultimate balance of my system. I again found myself trying to tweak the system back to perfection. Last week-end my friend was over and we started moving speakers, 1/16th of an inch at a time. Now the magic is gone! My system has gone from wow to nice over a few fractions of an inch. I have yet to find the spot again. So in conclusion, its the small stuff, even with less expensive equipment. If the equipment is cutiing edge the small stuff is even more important. I agree that you must first have a system that in general pleases you, then start the tweaking. If you want advise on where to start look at some of my posts or please write me, I love to help when I can.