Rate these on order of importance:

Herman, how can you say that what I ask is impossible? Come on, all things being equal, don't you give weight to some things over others?

IMHO, I would prefer a great source and front end with crappy speakers to bad source and crappy front end with great speakers.

As for the Pizza, try making a pizza without the dough first. You could probably do it, but what a mess. Plus, pepperoni is not necessary and sometimes a cheese pizza is not bad.

the amplification system. tubes rule!

Matchstikman, if you have crappy speakers with a great source the end result is still crap.

If you put one bad ingredient on your pizza you are going to have a bad pizza not matter how good the rest of it is.

I would suppose the following order of priorities:

1. Quality music and recordings (garbage in, garbage out)
2. Room acoustics
3. Line conditioning
4. Amplification
5. Speakers
6. preamp
7. source
8. cabling and racking needs.(a tie)
9. Furnishings. (leather vs. clothe, etc.)

I put line conditioning above all other electronics simply because sometimes one really doesn't know exactly what they are buying until the AC noise has been properly addressed (or sometimes improperly addressed).

-IMO

5, 1, 4, 2, 3