True or False?

Townshend Pods under my tube integrated amp was at least as big an improvement as under the turntable. Podiums under my speakers was at least as big an improvement as under the amp. Hard to quantify these things, probably it was greater under the speakers. My turntable motor controller on the other hand responded poorly to pretty much everything I tried, until I tried springs and Pods. Both were clearly better, with Pods being the best by far. So I think it is risky saying it depends which component. It depends more which tweak. Evidence is they all respond well once you find the right tweak. 

sgreg1- Question for some of the responses. Are your listening skills better in hearing the tweaks? Or is the delivery making the sound better and your listening skills are the same? 

A little of each I think. Used to think it was entirely down to listening skills. Because in the beginning I was like a lot and had a very hard time hearing any difference between a lot of different things. Different systems sounded very different, sure they did. But between two DACs or CDP or sometimes even amps was hard to be sure. Then one day something clicked, and suddenly all those audiophile glossary terms fell into place, I could hear them, and talk about them.   

When this first happened it seemed to me it was all down to listening skills. I even made a point of trying the same tweak in lots of different systems with lots of different components, different rooms, and always heard the same thing regardless.  

I still believe this is largely the case. Recent experience however has forced me to re-evaluate and allow that there might be some times when for one reason or another something works but you just can't or have a very hard time hearing it because of something to do with the system. Hate to say the system isn't resolving enough, but that just might be it. 

What made me reconsider was trying Townshend Pods under my turntables Verus motor controller. That thing has Synergistic Orange fuses in it, cones under it, a Shelf and weights on top. It is treated inside with fO.q tape and TC. It has a nice Shunyata power cord. It even has Active Shielding added to the umbilical. All these changes when done to all my other stuff each and every one of them was an obvious improvement. For whatever reason with the controller the changes were very subtle to the point I wasn't even all that sure some of them did anything at all. I was thinking this is the one thing impervious to tweakery! 

Then recently I tried Pods under it and was surprised the improvement was easy to hear! Now I guess it could be that the controller with all its timing circuitry is so different that it responds better to Pods than anything else. Or it could also be my system has finally reached a point where something even as subtle as motor control is revealed. At the very least it has to be considered. 

If you say so. That is not the case whatsoever. But if that is what you got out of it, that is what you got out of it.

It is demonstrably the wrong conclusion. Read the comments on my system page. https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367 There’s one where the cable elevators were removed. Actually I think there are two. In both cases the people clearly heard the improvement. Not change, improvement. What it takes a little more effort to understand, this was the same test but in two different systems. The Tekton Moabs in there now are WAY better than the Talon Khorus. Ditto the speaker cables. Heck every single little thing improved between those two visits. But the improvement heard by this one tweak, that did not change.

Totally blows your conclusion out of the water.

Also if you read the Townshend Podium review you will find the same huge improvement I got with my Tekton Moab speakers as another one got with much more expensive Wilson, I forget the model but way more expensive. Multiples. Most would say better. So another one blown out. 

I could go on and on. Suffice to say it is trivially easy to take even the most expensive SOTA system and make it sound a whole lot better- UNLESS it has already been systematically and thoroughly tweaked. 

To put it another way, you don't tweak, you are leaving mass sound quality on the table. 

We all can agree that even the best speakers respond to room placement but is it true or not true in (your experiences) that the better your audio components are, the less they respond to various tweaks?

I would hope that we all can agree that ALL speakers respond to room placement. This is after all physics. You would at this point have to find another universe for this not to be the case.

These smoking room hypothetical word games are kind of blasé so let me just say no, it is not true that the better gear does not respond as well to tweaks. Not at all. No way. Game over.