DarkStrorm: No worries.... I don't feel that I was slammed.... just that maybe I needed to explain myself as I don't want to come off as an elitist anything. But obviously, that wasn't what you meant. I would admit that you did peg me correctly as being an audio purist though - however, I do accept that some non ideal things have to be done to my audio for various reasons (EQ to compensate for my interior transfer function, TD to compensate for speaker location, MP3 to get my entire music collection onto something like the EMPEG, etc).

I don't know if you ever had a chance to play with time alignment or listen to someone else's system with it on vs off, but it really can make a large difference (at least in a car, where speaker location is usually so far from ideal). I know a few ms to one channel or the other seems insignificant. But the difference it yields usually isn't like one of those subtle differences that people try to explain when they switch from oxygen free copper speaker cable to unobtainium plated silver cables or something... it is pretty prominant. Most of my non-audiophile passengers at least notice that something significant changed when I toggle time alignment on and off (I can optimize for driver or passenger seat with the Sony head), though some may not know exactly what is different or if it is better or worse :).

If you hear a sound in a room and can tell where it came from by the sound alone, I think that is all the hearing you need to notice the difference time alignment correction can potentially make if you wanted to listen for it (the difference in L/R arrival times plays a similar role in both).

For example, take my system from last year, which needed more time correction than my current one. I had speakers in the stock lower door locations and tweeters in the dash. There are some tracks on the IASCA CD that IASCA documents where the various components of the sound are supposed to be perceived on the soundstage both to help you tune your system and as a basis for judging. The easiest example - most of the speaking voices to explain tracks are supposed to appear to eminate from somewhere near ear level in the center of the soundstage (center of your car), and ideally the perceived soundstage depth would be out on your hood somewhere. For my system without time alignemnt, the speaking voices appeared to come from my instrument cluster directly in front of me, and was not really distinct. With time alignment dailed in, the voice appeared to come from a more distinct point that was a half foot or so above the center of my dash - still not ideal, but better. Not only that, but playing with the timing can result in better imaging. In many stock stereos, you can easily tell that the example voice above is being reproduced by two or more speakers on either side of the car... and if things are too bad maybe you really can't perceive a soundstage at all from them, you just hear the two speakers no matter how hard you try, it's just too far off to fool your brain. But once you get the timing better by whatever means (speaker location, time alignment, etc) the voice coming from the two speakers starts to sound like one, it becomes harder to pinpoint where the speakers are, and it gets easier to pinpoint where the voice is supposed to be coming from (and it starts to sound more like the example voice is coming from a single distinct point).

Of course, getting everything really good can seemingly require endless tweaking of components, mounting locations and orientations, etc (that's what competing in IASCA is all about) - I have generally found that whatever I have put in and however it sounds, time alignment can usually at least make it at least a little better in the areas of soundstage and imaging (at least for one seating position at a time - which is the main drawback of TA).