I would guess it comes as no surprise to a lot of you that I believe tuning is at least 50% of the success of a system. All the great equipment in the world will be only as good as the room, speaker placement, isolation, power supply and cabling. A great example is in my system. Ive had the luxury of complete symmetry in my system for the past five months (sense the Bubble Wrap) and have had no desire to mess with anything. Over Christmas I rented a cable burner to burn all my cables, this made some good changes, but also altered the ultimate balance of my system. I again found myself trying to tweak the system back to perfection. Last week-end my friend was over and we started moving speakers, 1/16th of an inch at a time. Now the magic is gone! My system has gone from wow to nice over a few fractions of an inch. I have yet to find the spot again. So in conclusion, its the small stuff, even with less expensive equipment. If the equipment is cutiing edge the small stuff is even more important. I agree that you must first have a system that in general pleases you, then start the tweaking. If you want advise on where to start look at some of my posts or please write me, I love to help when I can.
How important is tuning?
I had a reciever NAD(25W) and I was playing my music on a Phillips DVD I also had JMlab speakers. I did not like how it sounded it was sharp and edgy. Psychicanimal brought me some cords which he called "tuned", a PS Audio Juice bar, and some sort of cones for the DVD that mad a incredible improvement. The sound was so smooth your ear could not get tired of listening to it. The question is, Is knowing how to "tune the equipment" more important than buying all the expensive things out there??