Cheap tweaks...What would YOU reccomend?

Clean up your power supply.
I discovered this last, but it should have been first. Get an electrician to run a dedicated cable from your switchboard to your power outlet for your analogue components (amp, power amp),and another for your digital (CD etc). The induction noise induced by fridges etc is amplified and creates background 'noise'. The changes for me included a bigger soundstage, more bass (even at low volumes), more black (quiet behind the music), and a general ease in the delivery. In terms of bang-for-bucks, this was the biggest improvement over new Transparent interconnects and Purist Audio Proteus speaker cables (the latter gave the best improvement but at a RRP of USD8000, they should).

Power Cords
Definitely work, it's just a question of which one, and how much improvement you get for the $. They often take 100s of hrs to burn-in, so see if you can borrow a few and listen to their effect. I have found the greatest improvement on my amp and pre-amp, rather than CD.

Power Conditioners
You can spend heaps on these, and whilst the good are exceptional, the others are VERY ordinary. (If you can't here the difference it is not for you, regardless of the hype.)
Bang-for-bucks: If you have access to a computer UPS uninteruptible power supply, give that a try to clean up the noise. The best are those which convert your power to DC and then back to AC. If you are drawing heaps of power, you will need one of suitable size, but I would recommend one of 1000kVA or better for amps or pre-amps. The small ones do a great job on CD players.

PS Rememeber it is about listening to your music, not your system.
Cheers

I just read all the posts on this thread; a very interesting thread to say the least. Here is my suggestion:

Go to radio shack and buy four spools of solid 18 gauge wire in both red and black colors. Each spool has 60 feet of wire and you will need a total of two red and two black. Also pick up 8 to 10 gold spade connectors with the red and black insulation covers on them. If you don't own a soldering iron, buy a 60 to 100 watt iron and some 60/40 rosin core solder. Get the lead based solder, not the lead free kind. Make sure it has rosin flux center and is rated for electronic work. Thicker solder, about 40 to 60 mils thick is fine.

You need this particular wire as it is soft drawn copper, which is ideal for hobby boxes. It also happens to be perfect for speaker wire.

Cut each spool into six 10 foot lengths of wire. Keep the red and black wires separated. Tie one end of all six red wires to a door knob and close the door. Chuck the other end of all six wires into a drill chuck and tighten the chuck.

Step back and pull most of the slack out of the cable, then run the drill at low speed, which will twist all the wires. I recommend clockwise simply because most cable sets are wound that way and this wire may have had the insulation processed with that thought in mind. As the drill twists the wires, the wire lengths will shorten, so walk up slowly on the door knob. With a 10 foot run, you should get at least 5 to 7 feet out of it. Obviously, you can make longer runs, but you need to buy more wire. Don't use less than 6 strands, although you can use more if you like. This stuff isn't expensive, but the cost does add up. I used 10 strands each and I was wiring up a pair of 16,000 dollar speakers.

Stop the drill when you reach the length you need or the wire starts twisting up on itself. Straighten out any kinks in the wires from the twisting, so you have one long, straight, twisted bundle.

Do exactly the same thing for the black spool of wire. Now, you have two lengths of twisted homemade litz wire of approximately 12 to 14 gauge wire. Repeat for the other two spools.

Strip back the insulation on each of the red wires in one bundle about 3/8 of an inch. Slide the red insulating cover over the wires facing the proper direction. Slide all six wires into one spade connector and solder it in place. You can crimp it first if you like, as it will help you solder everything nice and neatly. Do get someone to help you, if you run out of hands.

Repeat the spade attachment on the other end. Slide the insulating covers over the spades. Do the same thing for both black wires and the other red wire. If you get any flux on the connector part of the spade, wash it off in rubbing alcohol. Make sure the alcohol doesn't catch fire, as it has a low flash point.

Now you have made a high class litz speaker wire pair. It is up to you if you want to put a slow twist of red and black together or keep them separate. If you twist them, you get more capacitance and less inductance. If you keep them separate, you get more inductance and less capacitance. Try both ways and see which one you like the best. In general, less inductance is best when dealing with speaker cables but too much capacitance can cause some grief to your amplifier. In my system, I twisted them.

It is cheap, works great, and beats a number of better speaker cables I had lying around.

Stack 6 pennies and wrap them in duck tape and put them under three of your component's feet! GOOOOOOOD Cheap Tweak!

Here is a modification of above speaker cables: Twist the red and black wires together, one pair at a time. Then, put all of them in one large bundle and slide into some nylon flex housing in a color that complements your system. Use the red for the hot and the black for the ground. Do the same of the other speaker.

This will lower the inductance a lot in comparison to the above method, which is the big problem at these currents and impedances.

I forgot to mention this above, you can make this cable where each wire is as large as 12 or 14 gauge but it starts to work against you at wire gauges larger than that. This is because the inductance starts to increase with larger diameter wires; you simply can't get them together close enough to reduce the inductance. This is not to be confused with "larger wire has less inductance than smaller wire". Although this is certainly true, I am speaking of mutual coupling to reduce the inductance. Hence, eight 18 gauge pairs will have less inductance than say four 12 gauge pairs.

If someone opts to build this, drop me a note with your experiences.

3 Isol-Pads directly under the CD player and amp, or better yet, Isol-Pads stacked 2 high directly under the CD player and amp).