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Weakest link - a different question?

Google shows a fair number of posts to this forum where people ask "Here's my system, what is my weakest link?"  As an engineer, to me the more important question is, given system X in room with acoustics Y, how do I tell what the weakest link is?"  I'd love to know what methodology people use to determine what component or room treatment makes the most sense to upgrade next given the sheer complexity of interactions between room, amp, source, speakers, power, and cable?
Can any of you distill out from your experience what process you used when deciding which component from your system to upgrade? I'd love to hear your stories of _how_ you made the decision for your system.
(For the sake of background, I have an entry level British system: Rega Planar 3, Rega DAC-R, Rega Elex-R, Spendor A4s, Chord interconnects, QED speaker wire, and a Panamax power conditioner purely - because we live in rural PA where the power is dirty - but I am not asking about my system, it is the methodology that interests me).
Thanks!
wqgq_641

Showing 2 responses by douglas_schroeder

douglas_schroeder
3,281 posts
 
Without another component you have no basis for judgment. You need to do comparisons to find a relative performance threshold for a piece of gear. Apart from that you have no clue how each piece is performing. 

douglas_schroeder
3,281 posts
 
BTW, the best answer is: They ALL are to some degree deficient and in need of upgrade. Change ANY of them, for in nearly all (like 99%) of audio systems they are not optimized and there is room for improvement. People are guessing at what's missing, what's wrong, what needs to be done. Then, and here's the best part, they change it and what do you know? They were confirmed in their assessment because it got SO much better. Little do they know that because of the relatively lower performance of the system ANY component or cable or speaker could confer a sizable improvement.  

The exception to this is when you get to such a high level that you really are knocking on SOTA quality, or conversely when your budget dictates how much you spend and you have tapped out the upper echelon of gear in that price range. But, you have to go through a lot of gear to make a solid assessment that you are in fact at that point. Most people never get close to that. 

So... change whatever you like. It doesn't matter. You will, if you do your comparisons or research properly, get a nice bump in performance, and you'll feel like a genius.  :) 
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