And the biggest influence on sound quality is...

I've got recordings that make my system sound horrible, and I've got recordings that make my system sound absolutely wonderful.

I'm thinking that you have it backwards.  You have records that sound horrible or wonderful and your system sounds the same with either.

tomcarr

Funny that you post this. It has been my experience over many years that matches yours. The quality of the recording and engineering/production makes ALL the difference in the world. Garbage in, garbage out. It does not matter how resolving the audio setup can be, a bad recording will sound bad. Conversely, a very high quality recording that has been produced and engineered well... will make a good system sound sublime. I don't doubt that the quality of the component will make a difference. But in my experience the recording itself makes a bigger difference. My two cents...

I would think speakers would be before the room.  

I would put the room first, quality of the recording and then speakers third, though I am not 100% sure what you mean by the set-up.

@audiorusty Hello. By setup I meant the position of the speakers and the listening seat.

That is what I was thought you meant. Thanks for clarifying.

The room before the quality of the recording as there is nothing anyone of us can do about that. After the room, everything matters equally if you are really wanting to get a real hifi rig.

What about the listener? Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, isn’t it?

Back in the early 80s I sold, delivered and set up a system for a customer who was an opera nut, was well off financially, and was beginning to realize his mortality…he had an illness soon to be known as AIDS.  He lived in a brownstone on Commonwealth Ave. in Boston’s Back Bay…a very exclusive location.  I sold him a pair of KEF 104/2s, a NAD 7155 receiver, and matching CD player…good gear, but not what we call High End today, or then.  The room was amazing…high coffered ceilings, oriental rugs, dark wood library shelving, a baby grand Steinway.  I wired it up with 16 ga. zip cord off a spool, as we had no advance notice what lengths would be needed.  The sound I heard from that system was better than anything I had imagined possible.  It was the room.

If you're just getting started, the speakers and room are the places to spend your resources, but at some point it all matters.  Once the system reaches a higher level, you need to more careful to match anything new that gets added to the system level or it'll become the weak link....and the weak link is usually matters most.  

1. The room. A modest system in a great room can sound great whereas a great system in a bad room will sound worse - the wider you open the window, the more much flies in, as the saying goes.

2. The system - at the risk of repeating myself across various threads, systems are called systems for reason - it is the quality of the individual components but also how they do or don't work together as a system.

Recordings are what they are. A great system in a great room will make a bad recording listenable. A great recording on that system in that room will sound wonderful.

A great recording on a bad system in a bad room will sound "meh" at best.

...a glass of great wine.

Quality of the recording because it sets the ceiling. You can reach it or you might fall short of it, but you can’t exceed it

1. The room. A modest system in a great room can sound great whereas a great system in a bad room will sound worse - the wider you open the window, the more much flies in, as the saying goes.

2. The system - at the risk of repeating myself across various threads, systems are called systems for reason - it is the quality of the individual components but also how they do or don't work together as a system.

Recordings are what they are. A great system in a great room will make a bad recording listenable. A great recording on that system in that room will sound wonderful.

A great recording on a bad system in a bad room will sound "meh" at best.

It is the whole system which, of course, begins with the input and ends with the room. But like any chain every link matters. If any link fails the system fails. But in some ways the input could be thought of first. The rest of the system is basically set. Changing any part involves time, effort and money. A lousy source is easily replaced.

But let me throw out another thought. After over six decades of audiophilia I have come to believe the one characteristic of sound most important to sounding real is a system is dynamic linearity. And I don't mean the first thought of what usually comes to mind which is the ability to play loud cleanly. This is part of dynamic linearity. Dynamic linearity is the ability of the system to accurately, linearly, follow the source(which hopefully albeit too often isn't dynamically linear). It's the ability to make linear level changes whether the change is micro or mini or midi or macro. Think of a live, unamplified orchestra. Change your seat and the frequency response changes and yet it still is live. Or think about listening to acoustic music at the door outside the room. The sound is significantly affected and yet you know it's live sound. It's dynamic linearity.

These days, I find myself focusing on well recorded music. With access to so much content, why waste time trying to make a turd sound good.

Room 1st which includes dimensions and treatments.

system synergy 2nd - from cables to matching amp to speakers.

3rd is speakers sized for the room. You don’t want small monitors in a 30’ room and you don’t want large Wilson’s in a 10x10’ room. I had large speakers in a dedicated room within a room 27’ long with 15’ ceilings. I moved to a smaller house and tried the same speakers in a 16’’ long room with 8’ ceilings, great speakers in a large room to terrible sounding in a much smaller room. 
 

Right behind the speakers are the amps/dac/preamp all spec’d according to the value of the speakers. Your not going to spend $2000 on an amp if you have $100,000 speakers and you wouldn’t be spending $100,000 on an amp and dac if your speakers cost $3500.

Ultimately, recording quality and room will define the limits, but I am talking about top level equipment. In your average $50k system I am not sure which component contributes most. But I belong more to source first school, so, I guess, it's either the recording or "transport", be it turntable itself, cd transport or tape deck transport. Poor recording will sound like junk anywhere but with average recording the better your set up is the better it will sound. It's a continuum from very poor to great recordings, and I think the answer to the question is more complicated than this or that.

My ears. Have fun with it all and the experience.

The room and the system are what they are, recording quality easily the greatest variable. Now, one  can manipulate and change audio components and room treatments, same doesn't hold true for any particular recording.

This is a fun thought experiment.

If your source is LP, then I would argue that your playback system (turntable, arm, cartridge, setup) is most important.  Imagine you had near mint pressing of Kind of Blue or Aja, and you played it on a $35 Crossley.  It would sound like sh*t.  However, given a decent playback system, the recording is next.

Digital is very different as you can get acceptable sound from a modest or inexpensive source.  Here I would put the recording quality first.

Then it gets difficult.  Speakers are very important but require a suitable amplifier and proper setup in a room that they work well in.  Too many dependencies, but if I had to rank: Speakers > Set-Up > Room > Amplification.  Then comes the fun of cables, power, and tweaks.

Two separate issues are being conflated here. The recording is not a part of the system, but an input to the system, and its quality is a fixed condition beyond the listener's control. The relevant question is what's the strongest determinant WITHIN the playback system/environment.

It’s first the quality of the recording in my experience. Garbage in, garbage out. Then the speakers and then the source - streamer or CD into the DAC. Then preamp, amp and finally cables. The room is a wild card. I have a system that travels between 2 places which are very different. One is a listening room that’s been treated and the other is an open room with no treatment. My best system sounds better in both rooms than the old system I had.

@mark200mph

“My ears. Have fun with it all and the experience”

I would agree most people would leave this out of the discussion. And yes if your hearing is deficient, you may not know it without a hearing test and you can do something about it by getting hearing aids. Also it was mentioned that the recording is something you don’t have control over. I would disagree since many individual albums have different pressings and some have been remastered. Therefore one may able to get a better recording. As far as CD or streaming, yes there are versions that are better recordings than others and many are better resolution as well.

I generally agree with the OP .My mood is tied with the recording quality.

My experience is the quality of the recording is at the top of the list. You can’t make bad engineered recordings sound good regardless of your room or system IMHO.

The quality of the recording itself.

Then the room, the setup, the speakers, and lastly the  front end.

Try playing your speakers outside and see if you reevaluate the importance of the room. ;-)

+1 @knotscott 

I took your question to mean building a system, so I would answer absolutely

the speakers and the speakers........

With the room a close second.

Regards,

barts

Less than stellar recordings you can make better using for example the Charter Oaks PEQ-1. Would not live without it. An amazing piece of gear IMHO. 

I know it's the room but when I told my wife I wanted acoustical panels on the ceiling well then................

@tomcarr you covered most of the ones that really matter a lot. I’d add the proper technical integration of components when dealing with separate as opposed to integrated components like impedance matching and also that amp is a good match to drive speakers to their max. Poor matching and integration of components can leave a lot of performance on the table. This is a very common snafu that many may not pay as much attention to as they should.

Of course in the end it has to sound good to your ears specifically and that can be a very subjective thing to determine.

After that its mostly a tweak here and there perhaps. Modern DSP technology is your friend when it comes to getting that sound just right once you have crossed all the Ts and dotted all the Is in assembling and setting up your gear well. The icing on the cake!

The other things are all significantly big but room acoustics always plays a big role in how things sound (pretty much by definition) and is typically the thing you have the least control over.

Recordings are what they are. You have absolutely no control over that. You can only attempt to experience the works of others as provided as best possible.

Fun fun fun!!!

Quality of recordings are very important.

So my system had reasonable components and cables and I had albums that sounded very good and others that sounded less than stellar.

Some pressings sounded well engineered and pressed whilst others seemed to lack the same amount of finesse.

I embarked upon a journey of discovery with my cables and over the years, with the introduction of better cables, the system was refined way beyond my expectations. And, to my delight, the recordings that previously seemed to lack finesse actually came to life, providing a listening experience the equaled the best pressings I had.

My components are "modest" , compared to others in the market, but the cables are among the best out there. Unfortunately, the cables are DIY, but Hijiri is one of a few brands that can achieve "Audio Nivana"

So take a look at your cables, they do make a noticeable improvement

Regards, steve

@mapman Excellent point about synergy with matching components. I'm acutely aware of its value that can make or break a system but failed to mention it. Thank you for bringing it up. Very important point.

One question is, "What, overall, determines sound quality?". A different, but closely related question is, "What, under my control, determines sound quality?". OP tomcarr suggests the importance of the room.

Interestingly, the room is controllable by us in varying degrees. Some listeners may move the system from floor to floor, room to room, some are constrained to one room (but may adjust room treatments), others are confined to one room they can't do much about, and still others have one room and are told exactly where and only where the speakers may be placed.

So yeah. Two different questions, and "room control" floats between the two.

Enjoy.

I liked what Eurorack said about the room.

if I have the perfect room and my source cannot extract all the information from the perfect recording, does the room matter?  I put my money into the best source component I can afford.  
It all boils down to $ and compromise.

Thats my opinion, but that’s usually meaningless 

I think it’s 75% speakers & how they interact w/ the room. 
 

You can have a really good listening room, top quality front end ( analog or digital), amps/ preamps, cables etc but if your speakers aren’t good or at least really to your liking, you won’t be happy w/ the sound.

Conversely, if you have really good speakers that you enjoy, then even w/ a decent room & mid tier all else, the sound will be good & very listenable. Could it be better? Sure but at least you’ve got a system that pleases you. This is not so in the first scenario.

Would echo bigwave1 on Charter Oak PEQ-1. Couldn’t have said it better myself, Dave!

Your system, the whole thing, including the space you're in, is essentially a transcription device.  The synergy there, e.g. the speakers to the space, is something you can optimize.  There is basically nothing you can do about the stuff you are transcribing, maybe outside of cleaning a record.  There are bad recordings of historical importance that can still be enjoyed and listened to, if you're into that, but otherwise you can go more for audiophile quality stuff. I can go either way, but as time passes I find myself more irritated by the simple placement of instruments and the failure of the recording engineer.  As for yourself, the synergy of your equipment is more essential than any individual item, and you're likely not going to get there anywhere near overnight (although it's fun to talk about).

T

I appreciate 2psyop's mention of hearing aids.  Many of us (me) have compromised hearing associated with aging.  I have good HAs, a good small room system, and a very good desktop setup.  I almost never use HAs when I'm listening to either system.  I've found HAs to be fatiguing.  Without them I find that a short period of listening at low/moderate levels with small adjustments in volume until I get that just right combination of detail and air without going too loud -- which is also a problem for the hearing impaired -- puts me in a zone where I forget about my hearing and enjoy the music.  With near-field listening (2-3 feet) the room doesn't have much effect.  In a small room at moderate volumes the room comes into play, but less than in a large room that may not have been designed for good acoustics.

With live music the room is everything.  I go to a lot of concerts in Sun City Roseville , CA where I live.  The acoustics are terrible but the performances are usually entertaining but I wouldn't want to reproduce any of those acts through my system no matter how good the performance.  (Rudy Van Gelder usually isn't on hand.)  The finest hall I ever heard was built sometime around 1700 in Prague.  It is where Mozart debuted "Don Giovanni" and where parts of the film "Amadeus" was filmed.  In 2017 I attended a concert there.  It is oval-shaped, perhaps 75' x 50', or perhaps somewhat larger.  It has a shallow dome with clerestory windows that can be opened as I recall.  The sound of the piano and chamber pieces I heard was simply glorious.  If I had such a room I believe I could be content with a Bose radio, but I reckon even my desktop system's value would increase by a factor 100 fold.

I hope some well-heeled audiophile somewhere can replicate that room in one of his estate's. 

The room+speakers, then everything else. You’d be surprised how good some “bad” recordings can sound with high-end speakers in a proper room.

1. Gummie

2. Ears

3. Wallet

4. Good wife

5. Room

6. Recording 

7. Speakers

8. Preamp

9. Time....maybe that is number 1.

The last thing I changed.  (if I got it right)

Seriously, though, I'd have to say speakers.  Every time I change speakers the system gets VERY noticeably different.  I've made small, to the extent I can, modifications in the room and there is impact.  But admittedly I'm limited.  Bride has nixed taking out the wall and the stairs on the other side of it.  Also, won't let me blow out the bedroom upstairs so we can have a higher ceiling in the listening area.  MAN!

Amps have peeled back layers, brought more speed and clarity and with them nuance.  So have wires/cables.  The Holo DAC was both subtle and powerful.  The Townsend speaker bases were the biggest surprise.  They very noticeably impacted the treble, ion a good way!  Still don't understand that.  Are speakers the most important thing?  I don't know.  But I'll say, in most normal situations, the speakers have the biggest impact.

These kinds of questions are like asking what it the most important part of a bridge.

None of the gear changes have had that much impact on sound quality.

Seriously?  What gear changes have you experimented with so far?  I have heard profound changes with different pieces of gear.  

Besides quality of the recording , I feel the quality ofthe front end is a bit more important then the Loudspeakers , for once the audio signal is converted good or bad it cannot be improved downstream, you only get one chance to define its sound character. I have been experimenting with some pretty good dacs.

that have. Changed the norm in what to expect and  just under $9 k retail ,that can 

stay with dacs that are 50% more expensive ,hint from Europe.

I see the point and can't disagree.  Once a system has good, revealing speakers, the impact of changing the front end can really change the listeners experience.  And I forgot about the recording.  Even on a mid-fi system, a poor recording or poor engineering of a recording can annihilate the music.  And the better the audio equipment, the worse that thing will sound for sure.  I guess if someone has a lousy recording of music they really like they could scout around for an old Radio Shack stereo.

Ossicle2brain +10

I have a slightly different take.  First, the best enhancement to SQ is a bong hit of some good hybrid.  Never fails!  But at this stage, having heard my classic rock a million times, I find myself listening to a lot of bootlegs, especially Led Zeppelin, my favorite rock group.  The boots vary in quality from soundboard, near commercial quality, to not so good audience tapes from the '70's.  I find that my current system makes everything sound better, i.e., well-recorded music sounds fantastic and poorly recorded music still sounds good although the difference in SQ is obvious.  So I think that some systems are so resolving that unless something is well-recorded, it sounds like crap.  I prefer a system that is smoother . . . not that detail is lost, but sounds smoother.  My ARC/Pass combo with Wilson Sabrina X speakers, an MSB DAC and a loom of Shunyata Sigma cables and Shunyata Everest, hit that sweet spot!