Rate these on order of importance:

LOL Matchstikman. When I first moved back to NYC from school I lived in an apartment the size of one of my LaScalas!!

Resphigi's Church Windows is not opera. I don't know if Resphigi ever composed any opera's, but this is symphonic music in a kind of Medievel Neo-Classical theme. There are some absolutely amazing organ passages in that piece that shake the foundation and cause the mice to fart. I have a 45 RPM direct to disk Reference Recording that is quite remarkable. If you have a vinyl rig seek out a copy. You'll have to inquire to those far more knowledgeable than I on these subjects to find a good recording on CD....does RR still exist, and are they doing CD's? This recording is of Keith Clark and the Pacific Symphony Orchestra and is RR-15.

Best,

Marco

Nrchy - Sorry to have cut off your comeback. You've made some good points that I happen to agree with. I could also add that the 'room' issue is also at the root of many a good deal on Audiogon where someone doesn't give a component or system a fighting chance and either pairs it off with the wrong system, or compromises it's capacity in some other way like the room scenario. A good example of something like this would someone reading a review about a 3 watt SET amp and goes out and buys one to combine with his/her outstanding, rave-reviewed megabuck speaker that is only 88db efficient - well, you can bet you'll be seeing either the amp, the speaker or both for sale here on Audiogon once they hear them together. Yet each one of those components on their own is an expensive, well regarded component. Herman is quite correct...that's why it's called a "System". Not only will two identical systems not sound the same in different rooms, but they may not sound the same to two different sets of ears in the very same room. We all have different preferences and expectations of how a system should sound. That's why you can't measure this stuff with instruments that spit out numbers....that is only a small part of the story. The human end of that equation is entirely subjective.

Marco

PS I realized on checking the recording that I was spelling Ottorino Respighi's name incorrectly. It is spelled correctly here. Not surprising as I have trouble spelling my own name correctly these days! It's the RAID again, no doubt.

Nrchy & Marco, all of the arguements that you are using to prove that the room is most important can be used to prove that the speakers are most important - no matter how good the components are upstream, a poor speaker can destroy for what you worked so hard.

Yeah, but if you eat a really bad pizza no matter how good ALL your components and room acoustics are, you'll still feel like Ca-Caaa.