Percentage to spend on Amp and Speakers

I guess, Joe, you disagree with the order in which new components should be introduced into the system. I disagree with you that you have to follow any particular order. While I agree that speakers can be most significant in "voicing" a system, my objective is to not "voice" it. I am looking for the most neutral, uncolored, cleanest sounding products I can afford. If all of them are as neutral as I can find, the less chance I will have mating them together. Even so, in the final stages of putting together such a system, I agree that you are likely to find that there are some sonic artifacts which you might want to emphasize or deemphasize. If you have left the speakers to the end, I would still buy speakers which were generally quite neutral, but with a general balance and smoothness that I would find accurate and pleasing in any system in any room. When this speaker system was integrated into my system, I would try to deal with any shortcomings via the interconnects. This method allows you at least the chance of removing one component down the road and replacing it without destroying the sound quality you had originally. If there were any problems with room interactions, I would try to tune the system by moving the speakers. Small movements can sometimes achieve huge improvements in sound. If that proved unsuccessful, I guess I would try room treatment. Also, I think that you minimize the effect of electronics on sound. Different amps and preamps can make huge differences in the frequency balance as well as quality of the sound. I would say be especially careful of the preamp (if you have one, that is). The preamp is to me the heart of the system, since it provides most of the gain (particularly if phono is the source). A bad preamp in an otherwise great system is impossible to hide. A great preamp in an otherwise bad system is still an asset to the system. And what I said about preamps is true to a lesser degree with amps, but it is still true that power amps are very important to the overall sound. As proof that you don't have to do it your way, I am finishing up a system which I started with the preamp, then the amp and am choosing the speakers last, while retaining a 12 year old CD player. I don't claim it will be the best system in the world, but I don't believe that, when fininshed, it will give up all that much to systems which are much more expensive. Anyway, to me, speakers are the weakest link in the audio chain. They are the least refined and the most erratic of any of the audio components and for any need to "voice" or compensate for any upstream deficiencies, there must be at least 3 or 4 speaker brand alternatives. What is going to make the choice for me among those alternatives if I were interested in "voicing" are things like the speaker's bass response, midrange openness and clarity, lack of upper midrange harshness etc. ie. basic speaker performance criteria.

No cliche works better. "The chain is only as strong as the weakest link". As in motorcycle chains,or your audio system. Wire is a link in more ways than the obvious one.

Great speakers with a sub-par amp/pre-amp will never give you the true potential of the speakers. Amps are "fine tuning"? Time to get off the crack pipe.

Rayhall, I fully agree with your philosophy of looking for neutrality. However, in my experience there are no "speakers which [are] generally quite neutral", even if you spend tens of thousands of dollars. I believe speakers are the most subjective decision, because they all make big mistakes, and you have the pick which mistakes are less important to you (and which virtues are most important). With regards to Jim's crude comment hinting I am using drugs ( I don't think he was referring to the Nearfield Pipedream speakers), I maintain that if you are chosing between reasonably designed solid state amps in a certain price bracket the differences between them constitute "fine tuning" a system. Actually, what I did omit was that the more revealing your speakers are, the more important that "fine tuning" will be. I would agree that with the best speakers around, the upstream decision (amp + front end) is close to 50% of the end result. But this applies only to very revealing speakers (e.g. Avalon Eidolons, SoundLabs, etc.). But in most cases speakers are easily 75% of the sound (again, if the rest of the components are reasonably good, OK ?). In fact, I believe many dealers advise you to pick speakers last because that ensures you are sucked into a never ending upgarde spiral. So there.

By the way Rayhall, I hate preamps, even good ones (I have a good one, BAT VK3i). My next move will be to get rid of it.