Hierarchy of things that affect sound quality

I rarely hear audiophiles admitting that some things change sound quality dramatically while other things change sound quality little if at all. Everything from doubling the size of our listening room to changing the fuse in our microwave oven makes such a difference "my wife commented on it before I could even ask her."

Well, I have to cry hogwash and make a list, in order, starting with things that make a huge difference all the way down to things that make no difference at all.

1. Single malt adult beverage
2. Size and shape of room
3. Contents of room, including furniture, carpet, wall and ceiling treatment, windows, drapes, etc.
4. Speakers and speaker placement
5. Listening location
6. Phono cartridge and tonearm
7. Turntable (including the thing it sits on and its location)
8. Phono pre-amp
9. Room lighting (entirely psycho-acoustic, but IMO profound)
10. CD player and DAC
11. Amplifier (as long as I don't make it clip or start shooting out lots of second order harmonics)
12. Interconnects, speaker cables
13. Power cords, special electrical outlets
14. Green pen for CDs, amplifier fuses, cable risers, wooden hockey pucks, anything with "quantum" in the description

Feel free to add, subtract, rearrange at your pleasure.

 

I'd add preamp (7), TT setup (VTA, Azimuth VTF, etc.) (5), time of day/frame of mind (4), power (12), component break-in(6), component warm up (7), and source (quality of recording) (3) to the list.

That being said, it all matters and almost every component/accessory has the potential to wreck a whole system.

 

Ah, so you’re in the camp that feels all amplifiers sound the same. That is so far from the experience of a reasonable person that I don’t think a conversation is warranted or has any potential of being satisfactory for anyone involved.

 

A good gullywasher 12 hours before soothes the grid, and makes all the flowers smell good.

 

Would quality of the mastering belong in there somewhere?

 

Agreed about 3. and 4. being the most important.

 

At one time, I likely would not only have had the same #1 as you, but also might have had it alone as a primary difference-maker. Those days are past, though, and I must remove it from the list altogether. Given the rest of the items that apply to me, I'd currently go with numbers 3, 4, and 5. But that's just my context and environment. I do have an actual hockey puck around, but it's not used for audio.

 

Absolutely! But I was just talking about things we do with a signal once we get it home. I should have made that clear.

 

This is no place for insults. Please take that attitude back to Twitter.

 

If size and shape of the room did not matter, then every building would have the same acoustics

 

A THC product CAN change the sound drastically for the better in my experience -lol

 

I was gonna say a Gummy Bear tends to improve the sound quality very nicely...

 

In my opinion, room lighting belongs at number #27 and amplifier belongs at number #9

 

Unless we are including dimmer switches. I have experienced them introducing buzz at some settings in the past.

 

Edibles at top of list.

 

Ah, Colorado . . .

 

It's very difficult to make a ranking between room, speakers, speakers placement, furniture and listening location. It's a dynamic interaction of all these things. For me this total package is obviously at first place.
Marble risers for WiFi repeater power cord is at the second place.

 

It is impossible to rank these things, too many degrees of freedom and the list is probably nearly endless! But, brave try I have to give you that!

 

Earwax.

 

Yes! Lube for your banana plugs!

 

Proper matching of amps to speakers (synergy).

 

The proper matching could be room dependent ?

 

The anatomy and physiology of my auditory neuraxis, combined with my past experience.

 

Several of you are adding to the list of things that affect sound quality but not saying where you think the additions belong in the hierarchy.

 

Perhaps because it is relative? For example, if I have very dirty power power conditioning may come on top, whilst if I have clean power it come last.