Ok this will be a good thread.

Keeping the dogs at bay (I'm a cat lover), and getting back on topic.

SPEAKERS are obviously the most important link in the chain!! For the reason given by others above that they are the most prone to aspects of distortion. All modern electronic equipment after a $1000 price point are generally competent and good at controlling distortion figures, but the accuracy of speakers varies greatly - regardless of price.

Speakers have the greatest 'physical' impact on the sound produced in your house. THEY PHYSICALLY SHIFT AIR AND THEREFORE REACT TO THE BOUNDARIES OF THE ROOM. All speakers interact differently with different rooms, so the opportunity for error (ie, bad sound) is much greater.

A loudspeaker's response and interaction with a room (and positioning) is one of the biggest arbiters in determining good/bad sound overall. When was the last time you chose a Preamp, Power Amp, a CDP, a DVDP, a DAC or a hi-end turntable because it did or didn't suit your room ?? Not very often I imagine...

While on the subject of turntables, and to give you an historical perspective on this topic. Who do you think was one of the first people to hypothesise that the front end is the most important component? It was none other than Ivor Tiefenbrun of Linn Sondek turntable fame, in the early 1970's. Naturally, being a purveyor (seller) of hi-end turntables - he would say this, wouldn't he? The hi-fi press at the time bought this fable and we've had to live with it for the last 30yrs or more. Ivor has a lot to answer for, considering also that his bouncy turntable set-up is not the most accurate transducer either!

Regards,

Stevem 1960, nice to hear someone with a sense of perspective on things audio. I have no idea of your age, but that may very well be a factor in your views. The source first notion, while appearing logical, is flawed in that it is based on the premise that all the links in the audio chain offer the same challenge to the designer and manufacturer. That's how you get audiophiles to accept that cables are as important as sources, preamps, amps or speakers. Once you put each link on the same footing, swallowing the source first notion is a direct consequence. Could you help me out here? A comment on the archival superiority of digital I made in another thread elicited the response that someone should buy me a pony. What does that expression mean, aside from the fact that my not consistently coming down on the side of analog in the GREAT DEBATE relegates me to the ranks of a tin-eared mid-fier (or worse)? Regards.

Pbb, your premise is that "challenge to manufacturer" - as in, design sophistication at the construction level - determines "importance" of component in sound. Again, this is your scientific materialist bias once more on display (and feigning higher maturity with Stevem because of it, i.e. translating your ideology into ego inflation, which is what, not coincidentally, scientific materialism IS because it is motivated by a attachment to power over matter).

In such an attachment, the mind believes that the manipulation of the thing of matter, in this case the construction of a stereo component, is the most "important" determinant of the "quality" of sound produced by that technology. In other words, complexity of construction of technology determines "quality" of output. Again, this is an attachment to the "complexity" - so percieved (see below) - of technology, because the scientific materialist mind is attached to his technologic tools (which are the means of his/her greater power over matter).

This position, yours, in its logical extension - and, you are only using logic, and its all that you believe exists for deriving truth - dictates the worn-out premise, now widely discarded, that a person can look at a circuit and tell what sound comes out. Or - and here's the important part - how that output will effect the mind of the listener in terms of receptivity to the musical message.

Now, back to your "sophistication" premise itself. This, again, is a bias towards complexity of construction in the technologic tool, then transposing that bias into the meaning, "sophisticated" (because, I mean, pbb, you MUST be correct if you are more sophisticated in your arrangement of matter, right?). But let's take a closer look at your premise, which is: more parts, preferably moving parts so we can really see how "complex" the techno-thing is, means something is more sophisticated. In other words, and regardless of the result of an experiment - namely, listening to the importance of a component on the sound and its effects on your mind - your premise dictates that a cable is less "important" because it is less complex by virtue of its assumed lower design sophistication. In other words, you attach determintive importance to technology (matter)at the expense of the result of the experiment. Your attachment dictates that the complexity of the technology determines effect, but regardless of the actual effect, you will ignore that effect if not in keeping with your bias!

Scientists who ignore the results of experiments in default to an attachment to their technology are not being, uh, very scientif-ic.

If a cable-thing, as material condiut, engenders in the mind of the listener an increased receptivity to musical meaning then, per se, it is more important. If a cable-thing engenders a new result, then regardless of how many moving parts you would like to juice your egoic lizard, it is more "sophisticated". The changed result, scientifically speaking, determines the next adaption in empiric method to achieve the next result, not the material technology-thing that was the conduit for the observation of that result. To believe otherwise, is per se an attachment to the material at the expense of the very premises of scientific method it prays allegiance to - and, at the expense of the Music.

Yes, pbb, I know what you like to hear and why you claim digital is superior (assumably without conducting a proper experiment on yorself, relying, unscientifically, on the material "sophistication" rather than a result that would challenge your bias...). You are a scientific materialist, as much a zeolot for that ideology as any other fundamentalist: you see the world as material, through that prism, and, hence you compare objects for your results from matter. You look out at sound as a thing to be objectified; you seek "accuracy" and "detail" so as to further carve boundaries around the sound projection, to make it easier to percieve as if an object. Space as an integral vessel for the sound projection is relegated to a void, because you are focused on the sound-thing and not the space. You create a soundscape that is populated by a near visual experience of sound-objects of heightened detail boundaries, even more in relief from your void background of space, because the visual senses are object-oriented. You choose digital because, as a newer technological thing, you believe it is more "sophisticated", but below that, you choose it because it makes it easier for you to see the sound object. Any transition boundary not delineated is called "euphonic", etc., etc.

pbb, argue for your limitaions and, sure enough, they are yours. You are the man on the ground saying the Earth is flat, needing to say it to stay with all of your things, and the power over things.

My only question for you: Do you believe that dogs have souls? And why?

Oooohh! Asa, that was a Hula-popper with a treble hook! You're bound to attract a lot of "objectivist" fish with that one. They have minds like a steel trap - clamped shut!

Be quiet, twl, you are scaring away the fish!

pbb is a Tarpon, how can I resist!