Ok this will be a good thread.

TWL, I agree with your statement about good arguements about held opinions to be helpful in gaining more knowledge. I suspect, however, that we are going to continue to disagree on this one - too bad that you had to bring up the digital vs analogue comparison, though.
Still, I think that we are both striving to reproduce (or perhaps create) musical moments with our audio systems, but since we start from different premises, we use different means to achieve them.

Salut, Bob P.

So, Mr. T even a bad jazz combo listened to live can sound good if your mood is good? My experience is that a bad jazz combo would turn my mood from good to bad. Same with a bad sound system, some systems sound so bad that I feel sick.
Bob P.

Using that logic, Twl, that makes the room and the listener the least important! I don't think so.

Bob P.

TWL, what would have been really interesting about your little demonstration, is to have run the lp12 through the A40'S. I think that the listeners would still have preferred the A40 set-up. Your demonstration actually only proved that people preferred the speakers being played than the sources, since there is a bigger difference among speakers as there is among sources.

TWL, if I can hear differences among all speakers, but can't tell differences among CDP's, is it because the speakers are more important for a good system or is it because the speakers aren't good enough to resolve the differences among the CDPs? The answer to that question(no matter which) proves that it is the speaker that is the most important element. If it isn't good enough, then one can't appreciate how good the source is - good stuff in, garbage out.

TWL, Then, again, following your line of thought, the performers being the ultimate source and the recording venue and devices used to record the event, are not the most important element in the sound system either. Kind of ruins the 'source is the most important element' theory doesn,t it?

Salut, Bob P.

Yes TWL and it is always the speaker that degrades the signal the most in any system, so it is always the one that needs the most improvement. You talk of the source having to extract the information, but all is for naught when all that wonderful extraction capability (and addition in the case of vinyl playback) is lost in the degradation at the speaker step of reproduction.
I don't understand how you can say that speakers have the largest influence on the sound but are not the most important element in the sound system simply because they cannot "correct" any problems (if they exist audibly anyway) in the source.

Salut, Bob P.