Percentage to spend on Amp and Speakers

I may be going in the opposite direction here but, you can get very satisfying sound out of various speakers costing 25% maybe even up to 40% less than you are ready to spend. But I have found that if you do not get a good source, you will not want to listen to your stereo for more that a couple hours a week. With a well-balanced system, you will want to listen for a couple hours a night. If you are going to go digital, which I assume you are, make sure to get a good CD player or DAC transport. You must have a good source. You will have to spend almost $1,000 here and can easily double that if you go with the DAC transport route. An inexpensive and or poor CD player will make your ears bleed and you will get tired of listening for a any length of time even with the very best amp and very best speakers. A nice front end will make an average amp and well designed speakers sound wonderful. An amp / pre amp will give you more flexibility to upgrade in the long run compared to an integrated amp but like the previous person mentioned, you will have to add more money for cables which is the next subject. Remember that cables are as important as any component. You will need cables for you speakers, between your DAC and transport if you go that route and between you amp and pre amp. Again, you don’t need to spend a ton of money, but you will need premium cables. In the used market, discounts of over 50% are common place on good to great quality gear. Good Luck!

Ditto to the last post...this would be my approach as well.

Using list prices I have what amounts to a $1500 system for the most part, so spending the same amount for each component worked for me. Rotel RCD-990 Cd Player ($1500); B&W P5 Speakers ($1500); Conrad Johnson MF2100 Amp ($1500); REL Storm III Subwoofer ($2000 in cherry, but $1500 cherry Stratus III wound be a perfect match); Conrad Johnson Motif MC-8 Preamp. (Was $2250, but the $1500 PF-2 wound great). I probably have about $1500 in cables and interconnects. The only things I did not spend $1500 on was the Tuner (Onkyo Integra) or Turntable (Rotel RP855 w/Sumiko Blue Point). My secondary system in my den/office is a $500 each system except the speakers (B&W CDM-1) Happy Shopping.

I could easily double the cost of the speaker to say the Nautilus 804's $3500 and the other components would still be fine, so the person who said spend more on speakers is a good recommendation.

I would recommend spending a good bulk of your budget on the source (as recommended earlier). My rule of thumb is garbage in, garbage out. No matter how great your speakers and electronics are, if you are feeding them with bad signal, that's what you'll end up getting. I would say spend about 40% on the front end, 30% on electronics, 25% on speakers and the rest could go to cables.