What makes the biggest difference in sound quality?

Thanks it is my experience also with 2 years full time acoustic experiments in my room...

@mahgister - I thought you might be interested in the statement made by former dealer @richopp in a different thread where he said:

Accuracy in reproduction depends more on YOUR ROOM than any specific gear.  Once you realize that, the rest is just a hobby.

@mitch2 ​​​​​@mahgister 

Thanks for the quote.  Funny those who say your room it is last.  Some here may have been to audio shows (CES, maybe) and the comments after the show are ALWAYS the same:

"High End Manufacturer X (pick your fav here) was in a hotel room and his/her stuff sounded AWFUL!  In my room, it is awesome!  I don't understand why these companies do this to themselves" (or something close).

Years ago, many "High End" companies stopped going to CES (when it was CES and not a computer show if anyone one here remembers those days in Chicago) because hotel rooms were SO BAD and the comments from potential customers were horrible.

You can review such stuff in The Absolute Sound or Stereophile older issues if you wish.  J. Gordon Holt did a bunch of articles on this, as I remember, as did Harry Pearson, I believe.  But hey, what do THEY know, right?

Anyway, as I posted earlier, the old cliche is, "you pays your money and you makes your choice."  You do whatever you want and these days, you are free to make up your own facts about everything, evidently.  As a dealer, I put our best stuff in rooms that we could not get to sound very good, and some average stuff in those same rooms sounded "better" to the buyer.  I sold him or her what they LIKED.  Did not matter if it was not very good.  It was a business, not a church with me preaching the "truth" to customers.

You do whatever you want; they are your ears.

Cheers!

If we are talking a system from scratch thats a different story.

But you can't answer this question accurately because it's based on your system and components currently

I went and bought an uber power cord for my gryphon 300 amp/pre. The audioquest dragon HC.

I'm not even sure I heard a difference i would have to A/B it for hours. The thing is gryphon amps are so well built in their reviews it's often said they sound good with even stock power cords. And I'm also plugging it into a uef 12 se with the Galileo pc so... in this scenario the PC was least important.

You can't view them as individual parts it has to be in the scope of the entire system

I have heard this from almost all hi-fi equipment dealers that speakers make the most of the difference, spend 75% on speakers etc.. Only one from Overture, DE said it is 50% speakers and 50% equipment that I agree.

I used Plk, JBL, Infinity speakers so far with Denon, HK and Yamaha revivers. Then 2 years ago I got Focal Aria 926 that are high end to me.. and started playing with Marantz 6014 and Denon X4300H.. Everything should have been fine, I should have heard as I heard in the store.. right? Answer - Big NO..
This was all until I got Rotel and ADCOM amps, latter taking tt top notch to the quality and probably even better than what I head at the store!

So need dedicated amps for Full size big tall Floor Standing speakers and then changing speakers will give you that benefit
If using receivers, better stick to book shelf and satellites!
And am deliberately leaving sub woofers out of this discussion! 😊

A divorce.