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.

The biggest, most noticeable improvement? Well, lessee...

First it was the speakers
Then it was the amp
Then it was the cables
Then it was the room
Then it was the treatments
Then it was the cdp
Then it was the DAC
Then it was the preamp
Then it was the amp again
Then it was the speakers again
Then it was the DAC again...

Get the point? The point being that any component or adjustmet to the listening event carries the capacity to be perceptually the most impressive improvement encountered up to that time. I'm not saying they all do all the time; one must select well to get such a gain in a component.

IOW, it is a fruitless endeavor to seek a magical component which supposedly will confer the best gain or improvement. I have heard representatives from all of the above with the capacity to stunn in terms of improvement of a rig's sound.

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

Aaron, perhaps we are speaking past each other; I was referring to genres of components, not any one system I have built. I have built dozens of systems with a high turnover of gear, so I have indeed experienced all of the components I mentioned as perceptually conferring the most impressive change at the time. Inevitably it gets usurped by another as the rigs change.

If tweaking our semantic understanding does not close the gap in our conclusions, then it's likely we will not see eye to eye on this, which is ok. :)

One of the points I was hinting at is that when it comes to perceived improvement we are creatures of the moment and that what strikes us as impressive in that moment easily takes predominance in our minds. It is difficult to state with certainty that something we were impressed by months ago was less impressive than what we were just impressed by. :)

IMO, it's playing in quicksand to discuss perceptions of efficacy of one genre of component type (i.e. DAC vs. Preamp vs. Speaker vs. cables) over another, for it's difficult to extract the one and assess it apart from the system! ;) In the development of a single rig, sure, that may be seen, but extension of the experience to all audio systems is hard to defend.

For that reason I consider it a fairly useless endeavor to try to gain consensus in regards to a component which is able to confer the biggest advantage and seek it, much less apportion the budget accordingly (Maybe it would be acceptable to do so with speakers, but little else). Get the right amp and a person is likely to say the amp can make the biggest difference. Get the right speakers and an individual may conclude the speakers are most important, etc.

As usual, YMMV and I'm not interested in arguing my experiences in it further. :)

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