Ok this will be a good thread.

TWL, I know that you have given up, but all you have explained to me was that since there are such large differences in vinyl sources, it is obvious even over poor speakers. If I am trying to spot more subtle differences that are hidden by the speakers lack of resolution, how can I not say that the speakers are the most important component.
I am disappointed that you brought up the old arguement of sampling cannot represent the whole, and then admit that even the analogous signal does not contain the whole. So you are really talking of sample size, where analogue has a sample size of 90% of the whole and, statistically, digital's sample size is 98% of the whole, 98% of the time.

Salut, Bob P.

PS. I tried your suggestion to disconnect the spring on my Rega 300 and set the tracking force by weight imbalance and it did reduce the noise floor on my BPS (there was a very low level resonance noise, detectable mostly on thin vinyl discs. Thank you.

Twl my friend, desire-without-desire, keep going/jumping/blowing... Free yourself. :-)

Anyone: At what junction would you place your best interconnect? If you had only one superior pair of interconnects and one serviceable pair of interconnects on hand, and you had to choose to place them between your front-end and the pre-amp or between the pre-amp and the power-amp(s), where would you deploy them?

The way you answer that question might help guide one's priority of audio gear importance.

Try the experiment to find out what happens.

I recently had to figure this interconnect deployment issue out. My system had vastly improved performance when I placed the better interconnect between the front-end and the pre-amp; only marginally better (than my usual ICs) when placed between the pre-amp and the power-amps. In fact, some performance characteristics were worse when the better ICs were in used between the pre- and power-amps (and the serviceable pair had to go after the front-end).

I believe this experience was instructive in the source vs. speaker debate. Try it.

I guess I'm in the source camp but speakers are very close behind in importance.

I churn my system with agonizing deliberation. Only recently did I part with my 26-year-old Dahlquist DQ-10s, which I had restored a few years ago. During those twenty-six years everything else in my system had been changed a few times.

It was marvelously instructive to hear how much better the same old speakers could sound with different components upstream. The biggest changes were with source equipment: both with a SOTA turntable (1985) and a Naim CDX/XPS CD player (2000).

Another startling, magnificent change was going from a high-end Rotel preamp to a VAC Renaissance Signature, but that hardly counts, it was such a big upgrade.

Big improvement in having my New York Audio Labs Moscode 600 upgraded and tweaked by Stephen Sank a couple of years ago. Suddenly the Dahlquists had shocking bass response and fastness I never, ever expected to hear from them. Not only was this upgrade musically enriching, but it saved me money and bought me time, since I no longer felt the urgency to upgrade my speakers. It allowed me to take longer to audition speakers and save up for more expensive ones.

Recently, I retired the Dahlquists (they were falling apart, and finally just weren't up to the quality of the rest of my system, plus my wife was begging me to get rid of them for something smaller and better looking). I bought some Kharma Ceramique 2.2s after listening to lots of great speakers, and am very, very happy with them. So is my wife.

I must say that it would have been pointless to have such great speakers without having already invested in fine source equipment and amplification (and cables, though I'm nowhere near optimal cables yet), but now that I have the Kharmas I'm able to assess how much great speakers do matter.

[Next steps: vinyl (my SOTA Sapphire/MMT has been in mothballs since I moved to NYC in 1988, and I'm going to sell it and try something new), power (major reworking of the mains power coming into my 140 year old brownstone, new power wiring, outlets)]

The music you are playing is most important. After all, listening to music is what you spend you're money for. Right? Well, at least I do..... I'd rather have a simple system and some software then the best system in the world and nothing to play on it.....