Lowering the noise floor

Sometimes you don't know how much noise you are hearing until it's gone.  Have you ever been in a room that you thought was quiet and then suddenly the room becomes dead quiet and you realize that the humming noise from the compressor in the refrigerator just stopped?  It's like your brain just said "ahh, thank you."  I believe we can sometimes detect the lower noise floor in our audio systems with changes in cables, digital gear, etc. and the music just sounds more clear and right to our ears but really to our brains because it has to work less hard to be believable.

jc4659, exactly.
I think that in many or most cases power cords should be upgraded before interconnects, eventually both, of course. I did it myself, the cost was high, but it was worth it. Besides other things, noise level dropped big, distortion too, and both weren't too bad before the changes.

Power cords, power conditioning, and the Gutwire grounding cable do wonders in my system.

I have one word. Cryogenics. Cryo everything! Eveything in the signal path and everything not in the signal path. ❄️

I have spent more than $10k on treating both my home and system to reduce all types of contributors to the "noise floor": shot noise, EMF/RFI (from land, sea or air), EMR, grounding issues and so on (all Alan Maher Designs). My system only cost me $6.5k, but that $10k was spent gradually over the last 8 yrs, starting off very slowly and only progressing in price as confidence increased accordingly. But, for me, it just goes to show how important the role of this kind of problem does in fact play in music reproduction. I kept pursuing these solutions because I kept finding the ones I that I was using were working...if they didn't I would've given up on all that long ago. Everything improves. The modest $6.5k system I have is certainly modest no longer.

I could have spent that $10k on better gear, but it actually, I think, would've been a mistake, really. Sure, I could have had the inherent *potential* for better sound, but I would still be dealing with all the usual suspects that everyone else seems to be dealing with: EQ that doesn't really work well enough to truly solve problems, digititis, ss sound, "harsh" or "bright" recordings, best listening only at 4 a.m., upgraditis, insufficient timbre, tonal color, presence or sound staging, dependency on things like $$$ cables, critical speaker positioning, room peaks and nulls/room treatments...it even tamed how noisy that fridge is...all of that and much more has been either greatly reduced or eliminated. And that doesn't even take into account the transformational gains in both sound quality and presentation, all the way around.

Finding a way through this particular issue, for me, has proven to be the single biggest factor in finding that actual point at which I'm truly done with changing system hierarchy - exit strategy without compromise. I believe something like that might be the missing link for a lot of people. I suspect for most people that if they fail to investigate this aspect of music reproduction in their room space, they may be subject to the need to continually upgrade - and in vain perhaps because they might have reached their goals with less expensive gear, as I did - not by settling or compromising, but by finally solving all the right problems that were the ones that were actually standing in the way all along - and that would have continued to even after upgrading.

I think it's just possible we don't Rilly need the 'latest and greatest brand X', we just may need to focus more on what the longstanding audio problems actually are and how they can be fixed and what it might take to do that. Not for everybody for sure, but I can say that it was well more than worth it for me. No going back here. 

Cheers,
John