True or False?


Many high-end manufactures deny the benefits of tweaking their components with upgraded power cables, fuses, etc. We all can agree that even the best speakers respond to room placement but is it true or not true in (your experiences) that the better your audio components are, the less they respond to various tweaks? 
aewarren
To talk about the obvious . The better the equipment the less you have to tweek but having said that you can still tweek , just less .
"Ok, so what I've gathered here is that the better a component is, the less it needs a tweak yet the more it is affected (not necessarily improved) by one."

Thank you AEWarren.  "NOT NECESSARILY IMPROVED"

If something in a complex construction is changed, if it has any effect at all, that effect will either improve or worsen its operation.

If the tweaks are determined without scientific analysis (as most are), logically 50% of changes will lead to improvements and 50% to worsening.

So guys, what are all the tweaks that worsened SQ in your systems?
Our hearing from the factory is not as highly developed as it can be. The more we use it critically, the sharper it becomes. Just like all of our senses.

I think it improves with paying attention to it’s use, just like visual acuity. I conjecture that as our systems improve, so does our ability to discern differences in sound.
For the individual that creates a paradigm where, instead of relying on our ability to make tweaks to our technology, we pay an expert to do it for us.

I’m not sure I have any idea of where the point of diminishing returns and zero returns are, because I can’t say what the limits of any particular persons hearing is. 
I’m much more open to others opinion on what they can and cannot tell by critical listening than I used to be once I started to research the science of hearing, and could relate it to something I know a fair bit about; visual acuity, something that I got caught up in as an artist. It’s fairly maddening to be able to see things that others don’t, and some people are born with it, others have to develop it.

I find that the more I listen to the system and not the music, the more critical I become of my system and obsessed with improving it, which results in refining my sensitivity to the changes in it. It doesn’t seem to end, but it is real.
Power cords...  Put fancy power cords on a LPS that feeds a DAC and on one on another LPS that feeds a fancy streamer.  LPS's got super hot.  Sound was straight crap, and I just knew I'd be sending the DAC and the streamer back. 

Then for sh!ts and giggles I replaced the fancy power cords with the wimpy power cords that came with the LPS's and the LPS's cooled down and the crap sound turned to pure bliss.
There is an excellent article on this question written by Geoffrey Morrison in Wire Cutter. It’s called: "The Best Speaker Cable". Google it. It’s written from a scientific perspective (i.e. data; measurements; double-blind auditions; etc.). This article features a bunch of additional links to other articles regarding interconnect cables and testing procedures involved. I found it extremely interesting, authoritative and informative. It also corroborates my own experiences in this regard. For speaker (and other audio) cables, it comes down to this: as long as you’re comparing cables or wires, reasonably well manufactured of quality materials, under controlled critical listening trials, length and guage are what matter most. For example: given a 6’ pair of reasonably good speaker cables, will most people be able to hear the difference(s) between 16 AWG and 12 AWG cables or wires in casual listening? Most probably won’t. Will they be able to hear the difference(s) in critical listening? Some will; some won’t. Will bona fide audiophiles be able to hear the difference(s)? Quite likely. Will that difference(s) be profound? No, unless you want to ascribe a subjective definition to the word "profound". Will a $150.00 pair of good 12 AWG cables sound different than a pair of $10,000.00 12 AWG cables to the average listener in critical listening trials? Very likely not. Will the same cables sound different to bona fide audiophiles in critical listening trials? Some may hear a difference(s); some won’t. Will those audiophiles who think they can hear a difference(s) perceive that difference(s) as better or just different. Well, "better" is in the ear of the beholder but, basically, it’s really just a difference(s); not demonstrably better, per se. At this point, any perceived differences are subtle and minute in the extreme and no one will be able to convince an audiophile who has spent $10,000.00 on speaker or other cables that s/he could have spent a tenth of that or less to achieve, effectively, the same results!