SPeakers 90% of your sound

Ah, to hear even a mediocre system in a great room would change many minds here. The room is without question, to my mind and experience the single most important factor in good sound. It will expose both weaknesses and strenghs of a system, as noted above, to a greater degree than any component. Speakers and amp interface are equal, pre-amp sends the small signal to the amp/speaker and is second to the room.

The source is very important in that it can really improve dramatically the system performance beyond getting the room, pre-amp, speaker/amp right. A great source component in a system that is flawed downstream is not going to make a disernable difference.

I believe it so much that I am in the process of finally carrying out what I believe to be true, designing and building a dedicated room. It seems at this point to be the best investment I can make in improving what I currently have which in my estimation isn't even close to being realized.

Tubegroover I agree with you that sound room matters. However, we're assuming that we can't remodel our listening room within 5 minutes while we comparing different sound. We're only comparing the equipment here that's why we should assume the room acoustic is a fix variable. If you want to go to the extreme, might as well meausure the sound deflection from the chair your sitting with the sound meter too. While you at it, why not measure the temperature and humidity. While you at it, why not measure every spot with sound meter. While you at it, make sure that you have your ears check out before we do any audition. Oh, make sure that you're not under any stress while you do the audition too. Anxiety can change your listening mood too.

S23chang

My point is that on an absolute level the acoustic properties and dimensions of the room matters the most regardless of the obstacles in the way, WAF, dimensions etc. You can only get so much good sound out of a poor room regardless of treatments. No silk purses from sows ears, please! What is of interest to me is how folks spend large sums of money changing out gear in the hopes of attaining better sound when the culprit is the room and the end result is they will never be fully satisfied. It they were satisfied, why do they continually change out gear? The room is that critical in realizing the best attainable sound. I'm not saying that the solutions for getting a good room are practical. That has nothing to do with it at all. A mediocre room can be treated to get as good as it is capable of being and this is probably the case for 70-80% of audiophiles. Maybe the remaining 20% are the lucky ones. I'm currently in the 70-80 group and know it, realize my options are limited short of moving or building another room which I am lucky enough to have the space for.

Your remarks may be tongue in cheek but while you are talking about other elements that influence sound to varying degrees, I am talking about the most important component in realizing it. Of course this is just my humble opinion :)

I agree that the room makes a huge difference, and with that, all the other factors as well, (person, equipment, quality and materials used, etc..... the list goes on)

Do what I did, make sure you have all of your bases covered, and do everything to the best of your abilities/budget and you'll have a great sounding system.

A great system in a bad sounding room sounds
worse than a good system in a great room.

The louder you listen- the more things vibrate.
The less things vibrate, the louder you can listen!

A good system, properly set up, will sound better than a great system, poorly set up.

The Three common denominators that have the greatest effect on how good, or bad, the sound is from your existing system, let alone any component you insert into it are:

MAINS conditioning
Vibration control
Room treatment

Until you address these areas, you will never know how good, or bad, your existing system is!

ASi

Using my heart, I would have to agree with Phasecorrect, I so love my speakers. Because of that, I am not a reliable witness.

I listened to the CES systems too. The big room differences must have played havoc. I still gleaned enough info to decide I don't like Pipedreams, Wilson, or any of the really high priced systems. Then, the moderately priced Cabasse room blew me away.

So much for more money brings more pleasure.

Deciding on Speakers is the hardest thing in audio I can imagine. Deciding on amps, front ends and pre amps was much easier; cables, whatever.

Rooms, I don't know, because I have a great room. I imagine dipoles need a great room more than others. I have dipoles. Of course one has to bear in mind their room when deciding on size and power of their speakers.

If you've been doing all the tweaking you can, and still feel something is missing; if you have any one of the great amps out there; and you have a well sharpened front end (if you have been doing all that tweaking, I can only assume you've attended to the basics), then look to your speakers!

There are speakers out there which are spell binding.