Your Guiding Audio Principles

[Cosmik]

Yes...to squeeze more bass out of little boxes, and use a lot of EQ extended bass shelf alignments, you need much more power. This is not new theory, but Class D amps have made the implementation practical.

Yes, typical of the way improved energy efficiency goes in general: people still end up using the same amount of energy either by spending the money they save on other stuff, or they use the extra efficiency to do something else, like building smaller, more inefficient speakers.

In conservation and energy economics, the rebound effect (or take-back effect, RE) is the reduction in expected gains from new technologies that increase the efficiency of resource use, because of behavioral or other systemic responses. These responses usually tend to offset the beneficial effects of the new technology or other measures taken.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebound_effect_(conservation)

 

[egellings]

My room is so crummy sounding that I use an excellent pair of headphones to get around that.

 

[MattHooper]

Zombie thread!

Here are mine. I'm sure yours will be different, or even contradictory.

1. The recording matters the most.

2. The transducers, speakers, headphones, & cartridges, are next most important.

For me the first two are switched.

That's because the number one thing that I want out of my 2 channel audio system is a presentation that makes me want to sit and keep listening.
And for me it's the speaker that makes or breaks this experience. I don't care if a speaker is full range or whatever, if I'm bored sitting in front of it, it doesn't matter how great the source is. Conversely, if I am using a speaker that I really like, I can enjoy or at least feel compelled to listen to a wide variety of source quality, including fairly poor quality.