I believe Ivor made a few meaningful observations and upset some long held notions when he first hit the scene in around .....1971, was it?
I think his most important notion was the importance of reducing analog timing errors like wow and flutter an order of magnitude lower than had previously been thought to be necessary - and being able to demonstrate the significance by the relatively unusual, for the time, technique of relatively (2 hours or so) long exposure to the DUT (his turntable) followed by quick change to the control in which wow and flutter was now perceptible where it had not been before acclimatization to the new "norm".
I feel many of his other "rules" were as much about effective selling practices favoring his product. At first he marketed only turntables, so it was convenient that this be the most important item in the reproduction chain, and in some ways it could be argued that it was - at least until CDs, then for all their flaws at least there was suddenly NO wow and flutter and the source argument suddenly became much less convincing.
But Ivor was creating something akin to a religion, it seems to me. Adherents would have to suffer a little for their faith. Sticker shock created the requisite sobriety. There were rituals. Thou shalt not have more than one speaker pair in the demo room. Thou shalt have none other than Linn branded cartridges, arms, turntables, CD players, preamplifiers, amplifiers (one for each driver) and speakers. Thou shouldst upgrade thine turntable with the latest improvement, and everything shall have a "k" in it!
To me, Linn turntables are somewhat reasonably priced, but everything else in the Linn line now and in the past has consistently been at least twice over-price. Linn speakers have been hideously over-priced, almost always, and seldom better than slightly above average.
Sorry, I stopped respecting Ivor about 25 years ago.
My indoctrination, though, was so nearly complete that it was not until I did a really careful re-think about 20 years ago that I came to the conclusion that the old-timers were right - nothing is as important as the speaker, followed very closely by the acoustic environment. Next, the power amp, next the preamp and DAC, if separate, and (blasphemy of blasphemies) finally, the source!
However do not, as you seem to, _Scotty_, think I advocate starting by finding the speaker that sounds best on the end of your existing chain of components. No, I mean find the best speaker you can afford, judged on much better equipment than you have, in an acoustically superior environment if possible. If you must, go by the word of someone whose taste you know and whose judgment you trust.
Unless you enjoy the constant process of system evolution and change, and many do, the object is to get a great sound and live with it for as long as possible, so you can forget it and get into the music.
As a recording and mastering engineer acquaintance says:
"If you notice the sound, it's wrong".
