What was your biggest surprise?

My biggest surprise has been removing a power strip with filtering, surge protection and on/off switches. After reading in Stereophile Art Dudley's tips for better sound I bought the Wiremold L10320 which is a 15 amp power strip. This strip has nothing but outlets for components. The idea is to have a common ground for your components. I thought about it for awhile and decided to try it. While I was waiting for delivery I began to think that not all my components are grounded so buyers remorse was setting in and I thought about cancelling the order. It arrived and I plugged all my components into it. In the past I had the Krell plugged directly into a wall outlet and My Sony ES SACD player plugged into an outlet at the other side of the room. I had another SACD player along with my phono TTPSU and phono preamp plugged into a small power strip. So I combined everything into this 15amp strip with the Krell closest to the cord entering the power strip followed by the SACD.s and then the phono components.

Time to turn everything on and give a listen. Wow everything was sounding better. I could hear a singers tongue touch the roof of her mouth during certain notes. Timing has improved in that music makes more sense. I am not sure if it was common ground and less distortion or having all components receiving power in the same way. The sound was sweeter but not in a coloration sense but in a natural sense. Soundstaging was more solid and more space between instruments. Greater detail along with greater detail without any brightness added. As a matter of fact the Focal inverted domes are smoother than they had been. Overall a great improvement for about $90.
 
Absolutely without a doubt, this site helping set up my turntable, and not have to buy a new one, many mods and adjustment advice with no money needed. Night and day from what it was. Not great but now the best it will ever be. From a noisy feedbacking, rumbling nightmare to my best sounding source.
 
It may sound silly, but i was very surprised when i fired up my TSi100 Polks for the first time, i had low expectations regarding bass and volume fueled by the ignorant preconcept that i only had the money to buy the tiny bookshelf speakers (i reeeeally wanted a pair of towers or a pair of 12' speakers with tweeters), so they must be weak.
I was never so happy to be wrong, i fired them up and they sounded great! Very wide response, very good mids and very nice, punchy bass without being exagerated. I still don't have the correct amp to drive anything, my Denon is a very old and very basic device.
 
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