What made the biggest, most noticeable improvement

In what began as a very modest hi-fi, I've upgraded or auditioned much more expensive amps, sources, speakers cables, interconnects, power cords, power conditioners, stands, and speakers. Obtaining a great DAC made the biggest difference.

Douglas Schroeder wrote:

Any component or adjustmet to the listening event carries the capacity to be perceptually the most impressive improvement encountered up to that time.

All else being equal, that can't be true. Finding a better positioning of my speakers, for example, never had the capacity to make a more impressive improvement than my DAC—ever. It's more clearly true that some components or adjustments always have the capacity (realized or not) to impress more than other components or adjustments. By the same token, the following quote from Douglas is false, too:

It is a fruitless endeavor to seek a magical component which supposedly will confer the best gain or improvement.

Since there are components that can always offer more impressive benefits than others, it makes perfect sense to search and hope for one component that will make the most difference. Furthermore, If Douglas says is true, then it would be pointless to divvy up one's budget, percentage-wise, for the various parts that make up the system. If, as Douglas says, any component has the capacity to be most impressive, then it could never matter whether you spend more money on cables than speakers, or amps than source. And yet we find nothing strange about advocating general spending guidelines for a system.

Cheers,

Aaron

Hi, Douglas.
I'm glad that, although I spoke directly, you didn't take offence to my questioning your ideas themselves, as I interpreted them. I'm a bit pressed for time at the moment, so I'm content not to post what would likely be a long response in attempt to sort something out. I'm assuming interested users—if there be any left—can work through the ideas themselves :)

Cheers,

Aaron