Most eye-opening upgrade and what you learned

Hi Judith. It's good to see another academic who enjoys quality sound with their music. One of the most significant moments in my relatively short time in audio was listening to record playback sonically tower over SACD in a short A/B session. 'B' was the SACD portion, and I could not wait to get back to 'A'. The latest drama was a interconnect upgrade a few months ago. After selling my old cables my net cost for my new, used interconnects will be like $100. I did not expect such a dramatic, transforming improvement, and I was almost embarrassed that it was my cables that were pinning my sound down all that time. Good luck.
-Brian

Most ear opening for me was *finally* trying an upgrade AC cord - which for years & years I swore could not possibly change the sound of a system, WRONG! From there it was all downhill & I've become a diehard subjectivist tweaker. Now I have more $ in cables & line conditioning than some folks spend on an automobile.

that such an inexpensive tweak could significantly improve bass response and overall clarity. Understand, I'm talking about Hubbell hospital grade outlets (treated with Caig Pro Gold), not ones that are especially high-end.

Changing listening position- from far field to near field. Everything fell in place and parallax removed. All I had to do was try- at length. Try even closer than the famous sit-at-apex-of-equilateral-triangle rule, it may work for you.

Definitely the most eye opening experience I've had in this hobby was upgrading to my first quality analog rig (Goldmund Studio, Graham tonearm, Koetsu cartridge) from an old Audio Technica. It was as if I had found the music, not just the notes.