It's just occurred to me another fundamental FE ideal over the more traditional approach to equipment choice...

Alan Shaw of Harbeth is a polite, talented and extremely driven speaker designer, with his roots totally in the measurement led and subjectively confirmed way of doing things (he does listen VERY carefully, as anyone who's heard his products should be able to testify). There have been occasional comments about 40.1 owners with bass "problems" and Alan is adamant that the rooms are at fault...

What I'm trying to say is that traditional ways of doing it are to buy a speaker that is "correct" and tailor the room and positioning to make it work best (these problems when analysed were room-modes being set off by the extended bass of the 40.1 at one main bass frequency plus harmonics). The FE way (and Richard Dunn's I think) has been to accept that domestic rooms are often rubbish for acoustics and to tailor the speaker choice around the room so that the two work together as well as possible.

I found from experience that for pro use, the former approach is the best way, a truthful speaker in a sorted room being just right for monitoring IMO. Domestically, I think either approach has a place to be honest, as many living rooms with other people using them are difficult to change round to properly accommodate the gear.

In older LP based systems, the source first approach is still relevant if not taken to extremes and this is still easily demonstrable I think, as a well fettled turntable/arm and cartridge will always improve a modest LP based system IMO. With a good cheapish CD player like a Rega Apollo (Planet in my times), I found you can take far more liberties as the CD player was very capable and covered its tracks so well...