Why buy cheap speakers??

Cheap? Wrong way to put it. The speaker comes first, all else follows. Best to audition a speaker to the room it will be used in, that requires first researching a best fit list, then visit a dealer with your starting price point and have him drive it with $5K plus electronics and your source media, hopefully vinyl. A female vocalist is the acid test. Then, if you like the sound, ask the dealer to let you try it in your own room, driven by your electronics/sources/connects etc. If it still sounds pretty good, buy them from the dealer and then start up the electronic chain until you are satisfied.

Price relationships between conponents are IMHO meaningless, with the exception of the underlying question of getting high quality speakers or high quality components first. The problem with getting speakers first, the higher the quality, the more linear and resiolving they often are, they become revealing of all of the electronic 'warts' upstream and make the sound unplesant. Not so with getting the components first, except if you don't have those high quality speakers, and don't intend to get them, you sure have wasted a lot of money. System synergy/system balance is really what counts. And you can do that by an honest assessment of your attainable goals.

But I'm sort of LOL about the $300 cables for $300 speakers. I just changed out some IC's between the pre-amp and amp - the new ones were 1/6 of the cost of the old ones and sounded (in my system) infinitely better. I'm now exploring their application in connecting sources etc and even contemplating their use in other systems as well. I bought them as a lark and now I'm laughing all the way to the bank.

I am on the "buy what you want, that works for you" camp. I am not bothered seeing cables that cost 10 times the speakers system set up. That's what the owner wants.

However my take is a little different in terms of cables that cost a considerable amount for me compared to the cost of the speakers and I hope that I am not hijacking this thread.

When I am into SS and electrostats, I can justify the cables I bought at that time in regards to performance ratio (Synergistic Research, MIT, Nordost, Purist Audio, Acoustic Zen, Kimber etc. from what I can remember)and most were in the $2000 or less price point. Same is true when I went planars with SS or tube (mostly PP) amps.

What I cannot figure out are two experiences I have recently with two systems I own.

With SS, I have the Orion Plus as speakers. No considerable change or improvement with high end cables (IC's, speakers) or power cords. Secondly, SET base set up with low power amps (100 dB sensitivity speakers) using AC heaters with minimal hum (around 3.2 mV at volume pot fully open at least). These two set ups I have made me sell my cables for good. I am using just DIY Mogami's with Switchcraft RCA's for IC's and Kimber 8TC clone speaker wires I bought from an audio show, all coppers.

The Orions have active crossovers, while the SET system uses low power to drive the transducers. Both are now "audiophile approved IC's and speaker cables" free.

Any ideas as to why guys? I had looked into a scope either with freq gen, test tone generator, or actual analog signal and try to compare waveforms just before the driver and I cannot see anything that jumps out telling me that it is a factor.

regards,

Yep, either it works together and sounds good or not. There are no cost ratio rules worth banking on.

I am not a believer in the source-first paradigm. My perceptions as my system evolved over the years have been that speakers (and the speaker/room match) are the primary determinant of both overall system accuracy and of how enjoyable my listening experiences are.

I don't think it's possible to define a general guideline as to what percentage of total system cost should be allocated to speakers, because as has been mentioned above the cost of the speakers will be heavily influenced by what compromise in bass extension is acceptable to the particular individual, and also by the peak volume levels that are required to support the room size, the listening distance, and the kinds of music that are listened to.

As for speakers first or source components first, consider that what really comes first in the chain is the recording itself. And I think that just about all of us will agree that the quality of most recordings leaves a lot to be desired (putting it mildly). My initial expectation as my system improved was that poor to mediocre recordings would become less enjoyable to listen to, with their "warts" being resolved more clearly. But in fact I found that the opposite happened, because nearly all recordings seem to get at least something right (say, some parts of the mid-range), and as my system improved my attention would be drawn by the increased realism to what was right about the recordings, not to what was wrong.

But inaccurate speakers, or at least speakers with significant additive colorations, for me ruin every recording, good or bad.

And I would view the speaker vs. source component question as being comparable to speaker vs. source material, albeit obviously to a different degree.

YMMV, but fwiw that's been my perception.

Regards,
-- Al