What is your approach to system fine tuning with cables and cords ?

inna,

If your system’s not broken, why are you continuing to try and fix it?

And how are you going to know when it’s fixed and you’re done?

Listening to good music via a high fidelity home audio system is meant to be a very emotionally satisfying experience that is relaxing, soothing and rejuvenates your mental and emotional health.

Being obsessive and compulsive about the performance of one’s high fidelity home audio system is actually medically recognized as a disease.
Constantly being concerned with fine tuning one’s audio system performance with alternate cables and cords for marginal sonic improvements is the epitome of obsessive and compulsive and is definitely not relaxing, soothing and rejuvenating to your mental and emotional well being.

Why make perfect the enemy of the very good?

Remember, music soothes the savage beast, not fine tuning.

Are you hearing me? You are a friggin’ savage beast, not a quivering blob of audio insecurities curled up in a fetal position crying in the corner for his fine tuning mommy!

You are a savage beast, soldier! Break free of your audio cable and cord chains and get yourself musically soothed!

There is no joy in OCD so set yourself FREE. See?

Just my 2 cents,
Tim

Elizabeth stated:
 "One reason it was easy to for me to hear differences.. My drive for clarity brought the sound to the edge of lean over and over.. keeping it warm enough with the clarity uppermost was the challenge. So the sound has been on this edge for years.. Finding ways to make it warm up a bit and still keep the clarity. So I am really used to hearing this and able to make adjustments to bring it back to warm enough to make me happy, while still having amazing clarity."
    
    Hello Elizabeth,
     I think I understand your desire to balance clarity/leanness and warmth in your system's overall sound quality.  You enjoy the clarity because it not only enables you to hear fine details in the music but it also allows you to discern whether or not alternate power cords and Ics, Furutech duplexes,  AC noise removal gizmos and other smaller changes are actually creating marginal improvements in your system's performance.
     However,  you find yourself constantly guarding against your system's overall sound becoming too lean because you also enjoy a warm quality to be present in your system.  
     This all makes sense to me and seems familiar because I have the same inclinations in my preferred overall system sound.  
     I previously thought I achieved this by pairing a VTL 2.5 preamp with NOS Mullard tubes and various decent quality class AB ss amps (McCormack, Aragon, etc.) to drive my older pair of Magnepan 2.7QR speakers.
     A few years ago, however, I swapped out my good quality class AB  stereo amp for a pair of good quality class D mono blocks.  These new amps were a revelation to me in terms of clarity.  In retrospect, I thought my former amps provided clarity but these new amps caused me to redefine what system clarity, neutrality, transparency and detail actually was.
     I thought improved pcs, ics, speaker cables, isolation platforms and dedicated AC lines resulted in better overall performance of my system but now think it may have just been a placebo effect.  With the class D monos in my system, all of these types of small changes,comparisons and marginal improvements are clearly audible and obvious. 
     Anyway, back to the subject.  Just like you, I also enjoy some warmth in my system sound.  But, after some experimentation, I believe I've achieved this warmth in an alternative approach that you may find interesting, counterintuitive and informative.
     As an experiment, I reconfigured my system with optimum clarity as the goal.  I replaced my tube preamp with a good quality very neutral ss unit and setup a hi-res computer audio system as a source with a 2 TB NAS.  I ripped my entire cd collection to the NAS's hard drive and also downloaded numerous hi-res 24bit/96Khz FLAC music files recorded direct to digital from Sound Liaison.com in Europe. 
     The results to my system's overall sound was amazing and counterintuitive.  The sound was very detailed and transparent with the quality of the recording and mastering clearly varying depending on the cd file played but the hi-res direct to digital 24/96 FLAC files were significantly and consistently superior in recording and mastering quality with resultant improved detail, sound staging and especially improved dynamics that sounded more realistic like the dynamics present on live music.
     But the truly amazing discovery was that I still perceived the bloom and warmth on both cd and hi-res files.  Yes, it varied in intensity by file and music played but my main point is that it wasn't missing and too lean.
     So, I've come to the conclusion that we should probably add the music played as another method of imparting bloom and warmth to a system's overall sound.
Tim

Hello blindjim,

     You are a wise man, with many pearls of wisdom that suggest a good action plan to follow such as:

 "It seems prudent to say 'attack that which is blatantly wrong first."

Very good advice that I know better as 'low hanging fruit'.  

     I agree that there are no set in stone rules in this hobby,  
     I would advise newcomers to read and learn as much as you can but also listen to as wide a variety of music, formats and systems as you can,  You'll not only be gaining valuable personal audio experience but you'll also be discovering what music, formats, components and system qualities you like and dislike. 
      All of this will become important once you assemble or upgrade your own systems.  I think your advice to 'follow your ears' is a good way to keep in mind what's most important and increase the chances of building a system that will really be enjoyed.

Tim