The missing piece

It is my belief and experience that most systems do not perform anywhere near potential because they have not been tweaked out properly. Resonance control, power conditioning, flux reduction, room acoustics, CD/DVD treatment, etc. These are the things that bring a system to life. This is the 'X Factor'. Upgrading to a new component can make a difference, but in most cases it will be modest to an already good system. Tweaks take time and experimentation, but typically are the most cost effective things that can be done to find the 'holy grail' as Raymonda calls it.

"t is my belief and experience that most systems do not perform anywhere near potential because they have not been tweaked out properly."

That may be true. BEfore tweaking though comes the choice of components to use together. Tweaking may help but potential cannot be realized unless the parts work together optimally to start. That way you start with good performance and tweak as needed from there to get things sounding the best to you.

I'm in agreement with Mapman somewhat - my madness started when I bought my Naim 5i amp and Gershman Sonogram speakers.

I thought they could sound better :-)

In search of better analogue performance I started tweaking my Rega TT - until the only thing left that was Rega was the lid and power switch.

In search of better Digital performance I switched to a Schiit Bifrost DAC - and proceeded to tweak the heck out of that.

But, the one addition to my system that has paid HUGE dividends in performance was my investment in cables i.e. power, IC's and speaker cables, but it was a very long process

Every cable in my system is responsible for the stunning sound and I'm pretty confident that they have extracted every last ounce of performance from each component.

Regards...