The room (did you really expect something else from me?): it necessarily changes the amplitude and phase of a variety of frequencies. The degree to which it changes things and how degrading that change is depends on the room and speaker interaction. A cube shaped room would be one of the worst for amplitude change, as the deviations from a flat response would be huge. A "golden ratio" room (although I don't entirely subscribe to this theory), would give reasonable mode spacing and while it still changes amplitudes of certain frequencies it does so in a more uniform fashion (Bonello criteria). The other part is the phase--reflected sound is always out of phase (well almost always). Only an anechoic chamber can offer no phase shifts--but I don't think you would enjoy music in that environment. Phase shifts are what give us spatial cues.
What componant degrades the signal least/most?
There have been many threads on this website over the last several years which addressed the effects of different cables on the sound of a system.
In my mind virtually every other componant was a greater effect on, or adds it's own signature to the signal more than cable does. Every componant has connections (every connection is a loss of signal) resistors, capacitors, power supplies, boards. These things will effect an input signal more than a pair of terminations and a length of wire.
We all know that CDs and LPs are capable of sounding amazing. In the best systems they can be truly breath-taking. Most of us do not experience this at home though.
Where was that beautiful music lost? What componant contributed most to the loss of that signal?
In my mind virtually every other componant was a greater effect on, or adds it's own signature to the signal more than cable does. Every componant has connections (every connection is a loss of signal) resistors, capacitors, power supplies, boards. These things will effect an input signal more than a pair of terminations and a length of wire.
We all know that CDs and LPs are capable of sounding amazing. In the best systems they can be truly breath-taking. Most of us do not experience this at home though.
Where was that beautiful music lost? What componant contributed most to the loss of that signal?