I have a totally different take on all of this. For me, everything starts with the recording, if it was not recorded well, you can't make it better with your equipment. That being said, there is very little I listen to that just sounds awful, most recordings sound good to me. I just prefer to listen to the reference recorded material, especially unprocessed.
The second most important thing for me is implementation of my stereo setup. That includes speaker setup and additional speakers to recreate early reflections and reverberation. This is the fundamental flaw I personally find with everybody else's system. Every audiophile I've ever met uses an equilateral speaker/listener setup and never(hope I'm not assuming too much here! and If you have taken this in to consideration, I apologize!) stops to think that this kind of setup can't accurately reproduce the recorded event. Trying to portray a point source with a phantom image between 2 speakers gives me a headache. If you think about it, you can't logically have a single source(instrument) coming from two different points in space and expect to fool your ears/brain. Barry Willis wrote in Stereophile Magazine (August, 1994), "The idea that any musical event can be reproduced accurately through a two-channel home-audio system in a room that in no way resembles the space in which the original event took place is ludicrous."
As a side note to number two, I read all the time in these threads how this person likes this dac better than that dac or amp B better than amp D. I just don't get why all the effort goes into this, it is so unimportant for me. To me, these are all just colorizations. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those people that thinks equipment doesn't make a difference, I just feel these are personal tastes. If you audition something(and think it is a good value) and like it, go ahead and buy it. However, you didn't have a natural, accurate soundfield to begin with, so you are just manipulating the tonal qualities. If the tonal qualities do it for you, fine, but no matter how good the tonal characteristics are for me, they don't make it sound any more real.
The third most important thing for me is room treatment, especially bass. Since most recordings take place in a room bigger than my listening room, I need to tame the characteristics of my small room, since I'm trying to make it sound like I'm somewhere else. Bass is troublesome because it is harder to contain, but this can be achieved with enough bass traps.
The fourth on my list would be speakers. They are more of personal choice, but I prefer really clean highs and tight lows with a lot of dynamics.
The last on my list would be everything else, front end, amplification, cables etc.
I have a simple audio philosophy, I want it to sound like I'm there. Throwing money around on expensive equipment doesn't do it for me. I have heard $200,000 + systems, they don't sound "real." In fact, I rather have a Radio Shack system set up correctly than one of these megabuck rigs in an equilateral formation. Research and understanding of how the human brain/ear mechanism works and how best to get my stereo to recreate the sound field that I hear at a live performance is what does it for me. Usually, the most expensive equipment and ordinary tweaks don't result in a more realistic portrayal for me.
YMMV, this is just my two cents. If you are after "real" you might want to check into some of the ideas I laid out. If you want some really good reference recordings, I really like the Blumlein stuff. Russell Dawkins has some amazing music that he has personally recorded, truly reference material. I also really like the Chesky label, this is all Blumlein material as well.
