Hi All,
I'm not that much of a tweaker; I don't listen in a different room to the equipment or audition power cables any more, and I've never tried elevators, but I might give it a go.
Its feels like anything that's in the proximity of a signal-carrying conductor might affect sound quality, so PCBs, connectors and cables could come under scrutiny. I'm not so worried about the conductors themselves, just as long as the conenctions aren't dirty, corroded or vulnerable to vibration.
What I'm starting to focus on these days are insulators - dielectrics. Anything that falls into the electric field of the conductor can affect that field, especially if it has a high dielectric constant, like an insulator. Capacitors are the most obvious culprits, but I guess long runs of speaker cables running on or under carpet might make a difference. I'm not sure whether its the dielectric constant itself, or the quality of the dielectric that matters - the linearity, hysterisis or memory effect that is worth avoiding.
I hear people have good results with magent wire for speaker cables. This has very thin enamel insulation, and presumably minimises the volume of dielectric that falls within the E field, that's my way of thinking. I made some up, but haven't tried them yet. This points me in the direction of eliminating dielectrics as much as possible.
Garylkoh's comment that elevators make no difference with shielded speaker wires was very interesting. That stands to reason, as the shield will contain the E field. And its good to have a negative result every now and again that reinforces the theory.
What I really don't like are expensive cables and tweaks, I don't think anything more than a few blocks of wood is needed for elevation - anything to get the cable in free space. If people want to decorate with fancy products - fair enough, but that IS only decoration, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Nick