I know Mike through several phone conversations over the years. He’s a nice man, very generous with his time. My take-away is that even if you have a blue-sky project with virtually unlimited resources, it takes living with a system in a room to effectively dial it in.
I found this to be true with a somewhat more modest set up that started in NY- I was very familiar with the core of the system, but when I moved, and had a larger dedicated room, I was able to take advantage of what I knew about the system, its strengths and weaknesses, to take advantage of the longer, deeper room. Though I made some changes by adding more subwoofers, went to a different type of cartridge and improved the TT isolation, a lot had to do with set up.
I also did a big isolation transformer before the gear was installed just to do as much as I could to eliminate gremlins in the power.
I think Mike is to be applauded for his commitment. I know he welcomes people to his place to listen and his enthusiasm is infectious. The other thing that is notable is that Mike doesn’t profess deep technical knowledge, but knows who to tap for that. And, he’s willing to make changes, not simply to churn gear but to seek that last iota. At some point, I hope to visit him, I know that his is one of the systems that a lot of audiophiles consider to be a very high peak, but it isn’t just about all the top notch gear- it is the integration of that gear into the room, along with the synergies that he must have found a long the way. My two pesos.