Ok this will be a good thread.

Bob, that is correct. The performers and recording venue are not part of the sound system. They are part of the recording process. While I definitely agree that these things are important to the overall result of the sound we hear, they are defined well before we ever get a chance to play them. Therefore, from our playback standpoint, our source is the recorded material, however good or bad it may be, and the unit that we play it on. From there the signal travels through the electronic equipment, and to the speakers. Once it leaves the speakers, it is in the acoustic realm again, and is not part of this discussion, as it was "speaker or source" that was the question asked.

Asa, to answer your question, yes there are neural synapse responses, electrical nerve impulses, muscular contractions, etc, in the creation of music. While this may constitute the absolute source of the music, as I responded to Bob above, it is not in the realm of the playback equipment to change that, other than to degrade it. Therefore, I still contend that the playback system consists of the source material and player, electronics, and speaker. I make no claim that these other things have no effect on the sound. I only claim that the reproduction system has a limited, defined scope as I described above. Things that have been recorded are beyond the source player's ability to change, except to degrade, and things that happen in the room and the listener's ear and brain are also beyond the speaker's ability to change. So again, I define the playback system as the parts between, and including, source player and speaker.

I would also like to mention that I disagree with the notion that is commonly promoted that the room is the most important part of the system. It is not. The room is simply the last item of influence on the sound before it reaches the ear. If the sound is not produced by the playback system correctly, the room has no ability to improve upon what has been played. However, if the room is good, then a well played-back recording will have a better chance of sounding the best that it can sound. This is the same idea that I espouse regarding the entire chain. Anything that is lost or degraded in a previous item in the chain, cannot be recovered or improved upon down the line. It can only cause additional loss or degradation. Carnegie Hall will not make a "close and play" sound good.

I state all these things in a context, because I do not mean to imply that speakers, or rooms, or amps are of little importance. They are vitally important. However, they are totally incapable of making up for any losses or degradation that happens to the signal prior to the signal arriving at their input jacks. At best, they can only perfectly pass the signal that they were given by the previous item in the chain. The only item that can actually bring more information into the system is the source equipment, because its job is to extract the information from the recorded media. The more information extracted, and the more accurately it is extracted, BY THE SOURCE PLAYER, is the only way that the system can actually improve the sound that the system puts out. The rest of the system components can only try to do their jobs of amplification and speaker output without corrupting the signal any further. The idea that a speaker can actually improve the signal is fallacious. All it can do is attempt to tranduce what it is fed, with minimum degradation. The entire argument around electronics and speakers improving the sound, is based upon the quality with which these items pass the signal to the next item in the chain. A good amp, or a good speaker will pass that signal with minimum loss and degradation, and therefore is a better component than one which does not do this. None of them improves the signal. They only pass it better. This is the key point. The word PASS. In contrast, a source component does more than just pass the signal. It extracts the signal from the media. When this process is improved, more musical information enters the system, and the system gets a better signal to work with. Then the rest of the chain can do its best to pass it well.

All components are important. But the source component is the only component that can bring more information into the signal. This is why it is the most important component in the playback system.

From a logical viewpoint, there's no doubting the importance of the source, as Twl notes. In absolute terms, garbage in, more garbage out.
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From a PRACTICAL, "systemic" point of view, however, things *could* vary.

Practical as in, "which is the weakest performer in the(my) system?" OR "...in ANY system?" whereby "imporving THAT component will invariably make the MOST PERCEIVED difference"???
I think that MOST 'philes respond to the practical, everyday life, question rather than the absolute...

Possibly because information retrieval, such as it is, is at reasonable level in most of our systems. Note in this respect that in digital, most comments about a player talk about "nuances", musicality, etc, rarely about information per se.

My take is that in many cases our sources are equal if not superior to the task. In order to put these to their best use, we need outstanding components down the line, too.

Are we losing info, or "sonic qualities", along the way to our ears? I think so. If so, a pre-amp and a speaker *could* be doing the most damage...

In this respect, taking care of the pre *could* bring the system to another level, perhpas even surpassing the source, driving the speakers to their limits of resolution & musical qualities... Hence then, in THAT system, the MOST important "component" becomes the source (again) or the speaker, etc.

Gregm, I agree that in many cases, and possibly most cases, there is a single component that is degrading the signal more than the other components in the system. This is obviously the component that needs to be improved first. So from a practical standpoint, as you say, fixing the worst offender can yield a very nice sonic improvement.

Yes TWL and it is always the speaker that degrades the signal the most in any system, so it is always the one that needs the most improvement. You talk of the source having to extract the information, but all is for naught when all that wonderful extraction capability (and addition in the case of vinyl playback) is lost in the degradation at the speaker step of reproduction.
I don't understand how you can say that speakers have the largest influence on the sound but are not the most important element in the sound system simply because they cannot "correct" any problems (if they exist audibly anyway) in the source.

Salut, Bob P.

twl: I agree with your parameters of discussion, here, this thread's context. Simply making a point, concisely as I knew how.

I disagree with you, however, and respectfully, that because electronics are a "pass" through, they somehow are fundamentally different in the context of the value, "important", and even given our parameters here. Your position relies on two assumptions: (1) that electronics only "pass" information, which itself rests upon the assumption that other components do not, and (2) that such "pass-ing" consitutes a perfect transmission from source, or rather, that it should.

First, the only thing "fallacious" is the assumption that any constituancy of matter, any component, can perfectly pass through "signal." While this may be an absolute to aspire to, it does not presently exist in the applications of physics, nor in the practice of construction of stereo gear, the later application dependant upon the limitations of the former. When superconductivity is invented, then we can have that conversation. But, until then, all matter that we rearrange into technology and that we then use as a conduit for energy, in its various forms, is effected by the transference of that medium's transference abilities. In other words, limited transference capability as a matter of course, or a matter of our present limitations of implementation, does not equal "tranmute."

All of our stereo components are insufficient energy transducers, or transmuters, or transferors, or whatever latest action verb we want to come up with to describe the same basic action. We pass signal through these created matrices of matter and that action defines its output. In this sense, all componenets are "euphonic" of actual sound moving through space, in the sense that their imperfect material deviation results in a similar deviation from the voices "accuracy", "musical-ity", etc.

The skill is then in constructing a mix of such deviations into a synergistic whole. And the the question then becomes, if a component is not presently by its nature subtractive towards perfect transfer, then do such "euphonic" deviations that do exist produce an experience that reflects, while not perfectly reproducing the sound absolute, the mind's experience of that absolute; can the whole exceed IN EXPERIENCE NOT MATERIAL THEORY the material limitation of its parts?

My answer is, yes. And I might add, apart from ideas - as in how you put your stereo together towards your eventual experience - my strong intuition is that you do too.

As for source being most important because it does not transfer, the same deviation arguments above apply to it also. As I said, from where you are at, yes, the source change produces the most change, but that does not hold true at all symmetries of system construction.