I agree with Alan.
Audiophiles do tend to get a little weird around their stuff, I mean; silver power cords, 300B single ended amplifiers producing 7 watts costing $25,000 per side, gold plated conductors, multi thousand dollar turntables.........and the guys that can afford this stuff are in their 60s (or better) and partly deaf!!!
Having said that, I do like tube amplifiers as a basic babe magnet.
Parsons is completely right... up to a point. My analog system is not expensive. NAD pre-amp and amp, Project turntable, so-so cartridge, Warfdale Sapphire (yawn!) speakers. Yet with all of that mundane equipment, my sound is really really good. How did I do it? I listened to my local sound engineer and made some minor adjustments in my listening room. I put a rug on the cement floor. I added sound baffling furniture. I added a large bookcase for my vinyl collection. Most importantly, I positioned my speakers optimally. A 1" movement + a very small orientation change for each speaker did a world of good. It didn't cost me a penny in new audio hardware.
That being said, I had a chance to listen to a friend's Macintosh system with all tube electronics and $40,000 speakers. What a HUGE difference. I thought my sound was good but his sound was out of this world. I know we are talking about a quantum leap in equpment, not some stupid little change of speaker or interconnect cables.
I was a sucker an bought a pair of expensive interconnects (with a money-back guarantee, thank God) for my system. It didn't make even the smallest difference. Yet when I told another friend that I spent $300 on stupid cables and then had him listen to the system, he was "blown away" by the sound difference. There was no sound difference, but the placebo effect that $$$ brings. I returned the cables for a refund of course.
Film developer is another beast altogether.
