Good mains and Earth makes a big difference

Pleased to say nothing wrong. The more so after a recent cycle of replacements and 'trying' of some ideas others enthuse about.

Plus: Shibata stylus, Improved Phono stage, off board PSU for TT, Pure glass TOSLINK cable, record cleaning machine

Nothing to indifferent: Super mains block with cable shielding the system from things it didn't seem to be troubled by - RFI etc. USB cables, RCA internconnects

Bad / worse: thankfully nothing

It now makes me smile. Thats good enough

Those TAD's need space to fully appreciate what they can do

Yes indeed, John. Hearing Steve's system on Saturday was highly interesting. His solution couldn't be more different from mine in every way. As we said on the day: more than one way to achieve good sound!

I do not disagree with your points
Still think a good practical solution is to hear different approaches and decide for yourself
I think we should do our best to avoid hi-fi guru's. From my point of view my way works for me but might not work for someone else
I can listen to gear like Tony C Speedy Steve or Martin and still go back and enjoy my own but perhaps learn something new in the process

There is a problem with upgrading these days. Often something that is slightly better (especially speakers) costs a fortune compared to what you payed 10-20 years ago. Touring shows I suspect there are very few good modern speaker designs. Often we blame bad sound on the rooms but so often it is the equipment. It's pretty limited in application if it only sounded good at the designers place. Agree the effect of better amps is often underrated but much of the product has a very high price mainly justified by exotic casework. Perhaps a lot of design have become unnecessarily complicated. Often keep it simple is best (and far more cost effective).

Sure, but some folk (and I’ve met plenty of them in real life and on forums) simply don’t have the confidence to a) trust that what their ears are telling them is real (and not simply ‘imagined’), and b) that their idea of what constitutes as ‘a good sound’ is, in fact, any good!

In terms of the last bit, I guess the significance of that depends on whether the sound your hi-fi system produces is simply designed to please you alone (and your favoured forms of coloration), or to replicate, as closely as possible, that of real voices and instruments - or perhaps both. The latter is certainly true for me, as I believe that my system achieves both musical satisfaction and realism.

Returning to my opening point, if you’re the type who finds it difficult to trust your ears and/or identify what it is that constitutes as a 'good sound’, in a strictly hi-fi sense (read as musically realistic/believable/faithful to the source music input on a system), and what that *actually is*, then you’re more likely to fall foul of the effects of peer pressure on forums and your choices requiring validation by a ‘trusted guru’ - and that is NOT a recipe for long-term system satisfaction.

Marco.

I'll take your word for it. Myself, I don't think I've met anyone who, whilst sincerely believing that something seemed to sound bad, would lack the confidence to endorse the way that things seemed, and to judge, thereby, that it sounded bad. In general, I'd have thought that any lack of confidence in one's ability to judge the real from the imagined would be pretty debilitating.

In upgrading, though, I guess the judgements are more complex than that, since there will always be an element of comparison with the system pre-upgrade. So, rather than just good/bad simpliciter, it will be more a matter of judging whether there's a difference, and - if there is - judging whether it's a good or a bad one. By good or bad, I simply mean a difference that one either likes or doesn't like, and I suppose it's possible to be neutral with respect to this - that is, to determine that there is a difference, and then to spend some time on the fence as to whether or not one likes it. Still, I suspect failures of confidence are more likely to come in at the level of judging whether or not there is a difference, rather than the level of judging whether or not one likes a certain difference (after all, we tend to know what we like when we like it). But even here, I'd expect that the lack of confidence to make a judgement is very unlikely to be present in situations in which the testimony of the senses is categorical to the effect that there is a difference. That is, I wouldn't expect people to be unwilling to 'trust their ears' or, rather, their auditory experiences, where any differences are perfectly manifest. In situations where differences are not perfectly manifest, either because they're subtle or because they're non-existent, then presumably there's no categorical testimony of the senses that one would be declining to endorse, and so these wouldn't supply obvious cases in which people were refraining from trusting their ears (moreover, presumably a certain degree of caution is to be advised in such cases anyway).

Still, I've no reason to suppose that such people can't and don't exist - it just strikes me as a very peculiar position, that raises all kinds of epistemological worries!

“Pinch”, you make some valid points, but before I reply, what’s your proper first name? I like feeling that I’m engaging in dialogue with a real human being, and being on first name terms  helps 

Marco.