Aren’t the two main transducers, speakers and cartridge, the most important?

Your system is only as good as the weakest link.

@douglas_schroeder , boy, are you on fire. Thanx for the honesty. 

I would just like to say that the speaker AND the room are the most important component. They function or malfunction together. They are, in the vast majority of situations the limiting factor. If you have a bad speaker/room combination no mega buck amplifier or turntable will save the system. But, you could run a great speaker/room with an NAD integrated and a Rega table and it will sound quite acceptable. It will not be as good as if you had Boulder electronics and an SME turntable but many people would have a hard time telling the difference. 

On fire and unfortunately a bit off the mark. I like Doug very much as a reviewer and when I met him in person. However, my experience differs greatly from his with burn in and tweaks in general. I have done exhaustive listening tests on cable burn in and footers and cannot agree with Doug. Heck, I build cables and have spent countless hours documenting sonic changes with burn in. Oh my!

I am designing a cable right now that goes from being very forward and bright to just being nicely resolved in about 120 hours. I compare the exact same build with zero hours vs 120 hours and find the difference so easy to discern.

Townshend Pods vs hockey pucks 🙂. Yes, I have used hockey pucks, pucks under butcher block, concrete/marble slabs, various types of wood blocks, brass cones, carbon fiber cones and on and on…..The Townshend products are on a completely higher sonic level. Again, most obvious.

There are other Aphiles as intentionally curious, passionate and relentless in their search for sonic truth as Doug. Many of us have done the due diligence and just have heard different results. It happens.

Suggesting that platforms are more important than transducers is one of the most ridiculous comments I have ever seen here.

     Agreed!

Yes speakers and room interaction are 90% of what you hear.  They distort more than any other link in the chain by far.