In listening to your system(s)...what is most crucial to your enjoyment?

Hey Folks.  Thought I'd catch us up a bit.  This was my first attempt posting a topic, and missed a bit of clarity in the goal.  Thanks to those sharing so far!  Rephrased, "In improving the sound of your system, define the one thing stands out as the most vital to your progress?"  Spearheaded by the thick little audio journals of the late 70's, Harry Pearson and J Gordon Holt gave voice to hi-fi.  We've become quite skilled in the language of sound; in defining macros & micros, stage presentations in halls and the nuances of studio production..."inter-transient silence" is a fine example from above. 
In "the chase," my personal niche is obtaining the gear best I can afford, then going to work improving upon it.  Removing harmful resonances both of cabinetry and under the hood of all my gear has lifted the resolution to incredible heights over the years.  The trick is, keeping all that imagery musical, and in place.  Here, latest upgrades have been in the electrical realm, further refining my 10ga dedicated line with new outlet/cover and hard wired male plugs.  So far, results are more than the leading edge transients, and/or decay, or "air around the instruments," more than "flow," "organic," "ease," "Sheffields"  --Thelma Houston's, "I've Got the Music in Me," circa 1975 was my first, btw.--  It is, of course, the sum of all that...yet, timbre is what hits me first and strongest...my truth.  Onward!  Pin

 " a good recording can make a mediocre system sound great "

No way it can.

its cool to be verbally expressive, yet I feel life ingeneral is far more simplistic and few words are needed to actully convey what it is about a system which indicates it is doing what we want….

is the mouth open? if sitting, are the knees bobbing up and down with the music? do you not want it to stop? if the outfit is yoru’s do you look forward to turning it on?

those are what I look for as the end result which says, “feel free to exit the treadmill now:”

as for the shortest path to improving the audio fidelity in a stereo rig, I’ve always thrown my hat into the ‘SOURCE’ camp.

every substantial source upgrade has yielded the most benefits.

this indicates as well that all else in the system is already very good to excellent.

however, on average most folks do not own ‘destination’ rigs, and as such their rigs are usually in flux, if not entirely fluxed outright. I’m sure many of my former arrangements were in ‘process’ the majority of the time. maybe, always.

the front end first approach allows one to invest less in speakers too. its impressive what having $50K in front of $10 or 15K speakers can do! even with <$10K speakers the sound is ordinarily superb.

as for sheer impact, its gonna be all about the loud speakers specifically. make a major move there and things will change the most. everytime!

which way things change is the sole caveat.

I built my ($8k) system not to ’scale the summit’ by itself, per se, but primarily to avoid all the usual sorts of mistakes that I saw being imposed by manufacturers in the name of "costs", "practicality" or the "traditional approach" based more on what they see that people buy, not on what they might actually benefit from (I went open baffle [DIY] instead of boxed and with active [fully adjustable] electronic crossovers). Then I, too, started to dig down on improving what I had...noise floor reduction, EQ, delay, grounding, etc...and later this year will be adding a dedicated listening room onto the house. I've spent more on "tweaks" than I have on the system.

Right now, just a total falling away of colorations, lack of clarity, etc and everything here has taken such a complete step forward, that the "gulf" that has always existed between me and the performers has not just diminished, but has actually been erased.

Hopefully by the start of 2021, I think I will have just found my "exit".