SPeakers 90% of your sound

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.

I agree that the speaker has a very large impact on the flavour of the sound. But when it comes to the quality of that flavour, the speaker shrinks into much less prominence and attention to all the minor issues such as vibrations, power cables, etc becomes vital.

Yeah Phasecorrect, it's all in your imagination. Gag me.

I think Redkiwi brings up a very good point.

However, he neglected to mention the significant contribution that an amplifier (not just any amp) brings to the table. Which I believe has much to do with the quality of that flavor of sound, as well as the flavor itself.

-IMO