What makes the biggest difference in sound quality?

I am not a vegetarian, I like my meat, especially beef and pork, but I respect the vegetarians, both for health reasons and good cause. I don’t know how they do it, but hey, kudos! I cannot survive without meat for more than a couple of days. 
 

By the way, does fish count as meat? How about chicken, dark meat?

@STEAKster! I was going to respond to your comments, then I saw your OFFENSIVE and 100% IGNORANT username! I am 36 years VEGETARIAN, now VEGAN. I am also a HERMIT because I REFUSE to support our SATANIC SLAUGHTERhouse society. I also KNOW that many of you on this type of forum trend towards NARCISSISM, and DO NOT CARE. I'm also an ex-hockey player who still trains regularly, NOT one of those WIMPY liberal, commie girly-men vegans. I could have chosen to IGNORE this, and kept QUIET, but my CONSCIENCE will not allow that. 

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Some times a TURD float to the top. Flush twice and call your doctor in the morning..

Hello Ted Denny! Happy Holidays!  You have listed the items inthe correct order. Interconnects first, fuses last. Enjoy the Music!

hi ted, may I confirm by your most recent post that your own order would generally begin with power cords? how would you rate the others after that, in this case, or correct my assumption, otherwise?

Guys, why all the politics? This is audio. Whenever someone starts virtue signaling while simultaneously trying to control our behavior or derail a conversation, perhaps the best course of action is to simply ignore the Karen’s? Also, there is always deer and elk season if you like meat but want to avoid factory meat 😉

Most important components: cartridge, phono amp, streamer/dac, pre/power amp and speakers.

Medium importance components: tonearm, turntable

Not that important components: power conditioners, connectors, fuses and snake oil devices.

Grab em by the fish !

Relative humidity and elevation.

UNBELIEVABLE!!! WHO was the IDIOT who doesn't even know WTF a fish is?!? It's a "VEGETABLE".....MORON!!!  (;

😂😂😂😂. So….is fish considered meat or not? Answer the rucking question good dammmit!

hi ted, may I confirm by your most recent post that your own order would generally begin with power cords? how would you rate the others after that, in this case, or correct my assumption, otherwise?

@kevn it’s really about looms. If someone doesn’t quite believe in the concept, or they just do not have the funds to put together a full cable loom, yes start with power cords first. Then do speaker cables as that is a loom of two unless you are bi-wiring, them finish with Interconnects. Ironically, it will be the last cables you replace that aren’t part of the loom that will be perceived as making the greatest difference. 

You can make DIY Cords and fuses as good, if not better than most manufacturers. Pennies on the dollars, and it’s a lot of fun to experiment on your own. .

Copper foils for USB, and XLR. Solid for everything else.

Mineral oil+graphene+silicon dioxide for fuse dampeners.

DIY DIY DIY DIY. At least for the ones that are good with tools.

I bet there is an astounding percentage of hermit Agoners. Wow. To the OP, Speakers and source components first. But reality is, that is a MASSIVE variable with all number of possibilities. No easy answer. Power has to be second. If power sucks, so does everything else. Speaker cables next, then on down the line. And I too disagree that the entire loom much match, plenty of people making great music with a variety of cables.

You can make DIY Cords and fuses as good, if not better than most manufacturers. Pennies on the dollars,

If true then you are making cables for pennies that are better than the ones I bought for thousands. If true you would quit your job as they would sell like hotcakes. I would be first in line to replace mine with yours. In fact you would be nuts not to send me a set, just so I would tell everyone how great they are and you really could quit your day job.

Which is what Lubos did, so we aren't just spinning fantasy here, it actually happened. 

Now I can hardly wait for the DM, to find out which ones of your marvels you want to send first. The suspense is palpable.

The room

Speaker position

Rack position

Dedicated line

Cable management

Everything else

Interconnects, speaker cables, power cords, or fuses?

I must not have good ears, because homemade interconnects seem to as good or better than most of the store bought ones I have tried.

Keeping speaker cables short helps, and also keep em fat in diameter and bi wire them if possible.

I have not ventured into powercords and fuses.

I must not have good ears, because homemade interconnects seem to as good or better than most of the store bought ones I have tried.

there could be an open forum for say, car guys. You could have a group of these car guys talking about how they reduced their best lap times by seconds while outlining exactly what they did to their vehicles to lower their best lap times. Another group of car guys come along to tell the first group they are all nuts and that none of their tuning tips work, some even claim to have tried their tips and that none of them lowered their lap times. The reality is, both of these camps could be correct. The problem is perspective and details. The drivers reducing their lap times could be Porsche and Ferrari pilots while the second group could be Miata drivers. Knowing the details of an audio system is extremely important to put anyone’s perspective in perspective.

As to cable length, shorter is almost always better to a point, but if you must have long cables, make them your interconnects and not your speaker cables.

thanks much for your reply, ted : ) - kevin

@millercarbon 12 gauge mundorf copper foil, is 27 dollars for 10 meters. hificollective.co.uk

Make it yourself :)Cotton or silk sheathing is also available in bulk, very easy to use, or you can make your own. 

I have about $20K invested into my speaker system, and have tried all sorts of cables, every kind of construction imaginable. Simple unshielded copper foil (as XLRs and USB sound the best. Amazing clarity, timbre and dynamics. Soundstage is MASSIVE. I have also tried Silver/Gold foil, but copper was the best match for my system.

These cables are simple to make, and can compete with pretty much anything else on the market, it’s not a boast, or false bravado, it is a simple truth that I discovered after doing the hard work for myself. 

My opinion it’s all about lowering the noise floor so small things in a recording are more noticeable; when this is done all things will be clearer and less fatiguing. Music will be enjoyable at lower levers as well. In my experience it starts with the cleanest power to feed the components, such as dedicated circuits, receptacles with good contact, then the power cords. I use two different power devices in my system where all things excluding my amp go through a PS Audio P10 and amp goes through a Nordost on its own circuit; both units on their own dedicated circuit. If this isn’t done first then you’re just chasing your tail which I’ve done my share of in this hobby, including trading out components that probably didn’t need to go.

Next I will say it’s room treatment or maybe that should have been first. Between Interconnects and Speaker Cables I start with IC’s and run balance where I can. Depending on the components some cables have more shield than others, (same on power cables) as I’m trying to reduce noise EM/RFI to again drop the noise floor.

Next I would move to speaker cables, and that’s to wrap up the cables and move on to isolation of components and the rack holding my gear to once again, lower the noise floor. Also don’t forget to keep the cables tidy keeping them away from each other if possible. I keep my rack off the wall a bit so my power cables don’t get too close to the IC’s.

Lastly I do use boutique fuses and I do recommend them but I believe for many if their system is not revealing, having a low noise floor, then hearing what they do might not be as transparent. Except for two components I recently picked up I use aftermarket fuses. In every component I have added them it has been an improvement, but not where I would start. Just my opinion.

Fuses.

Gonna go with the following:

1.) Speakers

1.5) Subs - DBA

2.) Room/Treatments

3.) Recording quality/Source

4.) Amp

5.) Pre

6.) Everything else

there could be an open forum for say, car guys. You could have a group of these car guys talking about how they reduced their best lap times by seconds while outlining exactly what they did to their vehicles to lower their best lap times. Another group of car guys come along to tell the first group they are all nuts and that none of their tuning tips work, some even claim to have tried their tips and that none of them lowered their lap times. The reality is, both of these camps could be correct. The problem is perspective and details. The drivers reducing their lap times could be Porsche and Ferrari pilots while the second group could be Miata drivers. Knowing the details of an audio system is extremely important to put anyone’s perspective in perspective.

As to cable length, shorter is almost always better to a point, but if you must have long cables, make them your interconnects and not your speaker cables.

If we can start with consistent times, then that is usually better than occasional low times.

At least we can measure the track times.
Here it is like we describe how the car feels.

In my experimentation and experiences over several decades, those equipment pieces that do the transduction are the most critical for sonic quality.  Turntable/arm/cartridge, CD/Player/transports and speakers come to mind. for me as having the most-significant effect on sonic quality.  Of course, EVERY piece that touches the digital or analog signal will affect the sound.  It's just degrees of it in my opinion.  One other important aspect of listening is the listening-environment !  Much over-looked, it can make the difference between happy listening and frustration.  Make sure you take care of your acoustics !  Most likely the least-expensive "component" change you can make for significant sonic accuracy...  

I didn't take the time to read all of the many responses in this thread, but I did review a few.

I'll throw in my recent experiences with improvements to my system which have all been derivatives of trouble shooting nagging and continuing problems.

The first problem I was having was with overheating at the power amp/amps.   I could not get a handle on what was causing this problem.   After a lengthy discussion with a buddy of mine who was a Bell Labs electrical engineer, we concluded that I was probably having a voltage sag under heavy load at the outlets for the amp.   He asked what material my main service entrance was made of and I told him the rails were aluminum.  The first thing he said was that the electrician who installed the service entrance should have known not to use an aluminum panel when I am 1000 feet from the ocean.  The oxidation resistance on the rails is most likely causing the issue.   I had the service entrance changed out for a copper rail panel.   Problems solved and what a nice improvement in overall performance and I have not had a heat problem since.

The next change which was jaw dropping was after I purchased a pair of Anthem M1 mono block Class D amps which initially were running on dedicated 120V mains and were changed over to dedicated direct 10 ga. feeds from the service entrance and 240v each.   That was simply amazing in the ranges the amps would play, perhaps it was due to the amps now being able to play at 2300 watts each at 240V.

Next up:  for streaming music (I am usually a two channel vinyl guy), I use my Sony XBR TV with the YouTube music service feeding an Anthem AVM60 preamp through the Audio return line and had been using a decent Belden LE series HDMI which had worked just fine for a long time.   I have no idea what happened but last summer I started to have a lot of handshake problems between the AVM60 and the Sony (I suspect there was an automatic update done one night)... it was becoming very hit or miss if the two would even connect.  When they did and usually after doing all kinds of resets, things were fine.  One night that was it, no connection and it never came back.   Tech support at Anthem and Sony worked with me on everything, nothing worked.   One person said I should maybe try another HDMI cable, I had a few on hand, all similar to the one I was using and shorter lengths, still no go.

I decided to try a high end cable so I shot over to Best Buy and picked up an AudioQuest Carbon 48K silver plated cable.   I swapped it in and voila!  Instant handshake, snappy functions on the TV and the frequency range on the upper range really opened up, it was so evident that I thought I probably had turned up the treble setting by 3 db by accident, but no it was still set on flat.   It was so impressive that I went back over and picked up the Vodka 48K cable to a/b it for fun with twice the silver content and the upper end picked up a huge increase in openness.   The Carbon went back to the store, the Vodka remained in place.

Last item:   I just received my 4th new subwoofer and while doing the set up and phasing I decided to play with the crossover settings on the system.   I put all of the subs at 150hz crossover so that they will play the entire bass range with no upper end roll off.   I went into the bass management of the Anthem and put the main speakers at 80 hz. crossover to roll off the bass under 80 hz so that they would play the mid/upper bass ranges and defeated the factory default settings on the LFE and set it at bypass to put the full unaltered (I don't use any ARC room correction at all) bass range through to the subs.   WOW, I have never heard such musical, articulate bass.  It's as if the bass guitarist is in the room.

Hopefully my learning experiences above can help out for anyone who has not considered any of the above.  

Room.

Interestingly, the source seems to be be most important part.  Folks focus on the tweaks, but the turntable, CD player, etc seem to make the most difference.  There wasn't much talk about the source in the comments.

The room makes a huge difference with a lot of high end equipment, so I am not surprised that that came up a lot.  Some equipment, such as McIntosh, is designed to be more flexible with unideal room setups.  If you have an unideal setup, make sure you audition your equipment in your room before you decide.  That was probably the most expensive mistake I've ever made.

Next would be the speakers and how they match up with your amp.

Then the preamp.

Then the interconnects and speaker wires.  One thing I found was cost is not equal to sound quality.  For example, I use a very expensive interconnect between my CD and preamp, but the same cables sounded horrible between my amps and preamps.  A much cheaper set of interconnects worked much better there.  I still really don't understand what works best, but I've found through trial and error there can be large improvements between different interconnects.  Anticables have worked well in most situations, esp speaker wires.

Other tweaks can make a difference once you figured out the above.

A power regenerator is great with a turntable.

If you do vinyl, a good record cleaner is worth its weight in gold.

@ted_denney Ted, since you framed the question to cover all the products Synergistic Research sells, I can tell you that the Shunyata cables and power distribution devices I recently purchased made a significant SQ improvement over your cables and PowerCell device, especially for my dCS Rossini DAC/Streamer. 

It is very disappointing how many people didn’t read OP’s question and answer in a constructive fashion which of those 4 items made the biggest difference for amps and preamps. 

I think it may be a potential adverse reaction to self promotion.

@boothroyd  +10

To my ears, I would have to say that going from stock power cords to a nice one like the Audience Power Chord, or one of Morrow's line on the power amp made an audible difference in the tightness and presence of the bass.  Speaker cables made a difference as well, audible but subtle, more in the high end of the treble. For me, IC's made the smallest difference.  But YMMV, since I don't have "golden ears" anymore, unlike some of you folks . . .

It starts at the source and goes downstream from there. Most people here are forgetting the proper order of the signal path. If you start with garbage it only goes down from there, if you're looking for the actual information the artist intended. If you want it colored, have at it anywhere - I'm talking as neutral as possible, only worrying about distortion/noise.

1 - Source (cartridge/arm/table)

2 - Phono stage

3 - Pre amp

4 - amp

5 - speakers

If you want to put power cords and interconnects in there, place them in the order of where they touch the signal, with a power conditioner and it's power cable inserted with 1,2,3,@4 and the interconnect between the phono stage and preamp (assuming cartridge is hard wired continuously on a cable to the phono stage) between 2 & 3. Hopefully your system will allow for an integrated amp and eliminate an interconnect between the preamp and power amp.

My 2 cents.

Cabling and power cord choices choices can make a huge difference, not always in a positive manner as they are system dependent and could require experimentation.

Agree with whoever said power. After I tweeked everything else added EquiTech 2RQ. Was blown away. Made a bigger difference than about every other change combined. Don't care how top end your setup is, if you are feeding it noisy AC, your gear is operating with one arm tied behind it's back.

Of the choices provided, my experience is that interconnects and speaker cables first, power cabling, and then fuses. I believe the answer is relative to the quality/performance of the item getting replaced.  For example, going from 14 gauge Kimber cable speaker wire to Transparent Reference XL speaker cables was a dramatic change for me. Subsequent change unlikely to be that dramatic.

Similar to other posts, I believe there are things that take priority over the items mentioned. 

Electric signal.  I installed a separate meter connection for my electric, direct wired to audio room, with 6' deep copper pipe grounding and separate panel. If the electrical signal is nasty to start with, nothing (IMHO) can fix that. SQ will suffer.

Room treatment. Bottom line.  If properly analyzed & installed, acoustic treatment  will make any system sound significantly better, if not great.

I don't believe using a full loom of cables from just one manufacturer makes sense regardless of the fact that we have one such punting his product here. Is this self promotion actually allowed?

The idea is put forward as staying with a certain house sound. When designing for instance a speaker cable, the purity of wire, the metallurgy of the connectors, the dielectric properties of the insulation and decorative outer covering all impact on the result. Now look at a USB cable, with different power requirements and vastly different types of connectors. How does the designer create his cables to adhere to his idea of the ideal 'house sound' ?

After sorting out the room which is paramount one can then try different cables, fuses, amps etc. Without taming the room by reducing the overly long time the sound takes to decay which is adding smear and obscuring detail, any  attempt at improving the system is doomed. For example, sound way too bright...add tubes and on and on.

You will never hear any manufacturer telling you to: "get back to me after you've treated your room" What you get is: "Buy a full loom of our cables to sort out all your problems.

Happy new year to all 🍺 🍹

My two cents here:

1 Room

2 Speakers

3 Source

4 Preamp/Power Amp (depending on speakers, a good integrated with few watts can be enough)

5 Power cords

6 Speakers cables

You say, Teddy, biggest and baddest and most wonderfullest in my system:

LPS fitted with

Blue Synergistic fuses.

You say, Teddy, biggest and baddest and most wonderfullest in my system:

Minimum 300 watts LPS fitted with

Blue Synergistic fuses.

Once you get the room right, with a bunch of Ethan’s acoustic panels, it does not really matter what speakers and gear you use. It will sound fabulous! 🙄🙄🙄

Walmart $49 DVD player, kiddie ladders as “speaker” stands, etc. It will all sound the same as a $xxxx,xxx,xxxxx system

This went way better than I anticipated!

Fuses of course, start off with a good set and plan your entire system around them. Everything else in your setup is a virtual afterthought………..;)

The purple is an amazing fuse. It’s on par with my DIY fuse as far as clarity/distortion goes, but it has a more vivid timbre in comparison.

The DIY fuse has a richer presentation of the mids, the Purple is bit more balanced across the spectrum. Pianos especially stand out in every quality recording.

Overall a very nice fuse, and is definitely going to be a great upgrade on most HiFi systems 👍

1. Quality of Recording
2. Overall placement, rack & cable management.

Assuming that folks are happy with their gear, they experiment with cables. Most often the result is a mishmash of kit cross talking affecting each other.

Ted's products are innovative, and almost always improve the sound. (tried with my Devialet/Boenicke combo), but are very awkward to manage.

As most of the competition, they are contributing to the mess. Improving on ergonomics is the next step.

Starting with the power side is were I found a lot of gain in quality to my system. Good outlet and power conditioner. Plus the power cords. 

The most difficult to find component that is affordable is the power amplifier IMHO!

Rest in Peace John Bedini... and Gary...!