Redbeard, your an audiophile after my own heart. Long ago, on this site, I infuriated a few folks by suggesting that since what the speaker is moving is the air in the room, it should be fragrant to sound better. I even suggested that French perfume was the only thing for products from that country, such as JM Lab Utopias and the like, but that, having Bryston and Canadian speakers from a large manufacturer because of my limited means, that a pine scented air-freshener was best in my case. Insofar as the paint on the walls, obviously the colour of the paint does have psychoacoustic consequences. The texture is very important also, the best being an eggshell finish. You may have a tough row to hoe with this crowd though if you only bring science, technical know-how or plain common sense to the table. Good luck.
Do Transports Matter???
I borrowed an outboard D/A from a friend to try in my system. My intent was to hook the analog outs on my CDP to one input on my preamp and the analog outs of the DAC to another input so I could a/b my player with and without the DAC. However something is wrong with the digital out on my player because I couldn't lock a siginal with the DAC. So I grabbed my pioneer DVD Player and hooked it up as a transport. Everything sounds awesome, made a big difference in my system(won't go into details). The outboard also puts the DVD players onboard DAC to shame(well duh). But this of course also made me wonder if using a different transport(my cdp if it worked)would make any difference?? In reality the DVD player is reading the CD and sending 0s and 1s to the DAC where its reclocked anyway. I know that sometimes little things make a difference, even though on paper they shouldn't. Being this is my first expirence with an outboard DAC, I am just curious if what you use as a transport makes any difference