A hi-fi system is like a marriage. They both range in levels of success depending on the players and circumstances. There are plenty of dysfunctional marriages and systems, good and bad ones, spectacular and piss poor ones and everything in between.
To suggest that a dysfunctional marriage of people or systems can be remedied by fixing one errant element and not the other is optimistic at best. But while it can't be fixed, it can be improved and that's the key to our next few series of posts.
Choosing which element in a system is its heart is probably impossible because we're audiophiles and we cannot agree on the weather let alone something this important. Some say, speakers, while others are emphatic it's the source, preamp, amplifier. Yet, there are those who will tell you it doesn't matter, that the sound is all that counts regardless of how you get there.
We're all right. And, we're all wrong.
As I have said in the past, loudspeakers are more important than anything else in the chain. Bam! I've just alienated a whole group of Linn devotees married to their turntables—what does it matter at the speakers if the source can't render it?
Ahhh, tomorrow we go to counseling.
