Why buy cheap speakers??

On the other hand, I can recall getting really great sound from a cheap Sony cassette deck and a cheapish turntable (AR with MMT arm and Monster Alpha MC cart) through Acoustat 2+2s with custom-built tube servo-charge amplifiers.

So in my view, the amp-speaker combo is equally important as having a decent source. In fact I find cheap speaker/amp combinations are even more irritating and limiting than having a modest source with a great amp and speakers. Cheap speakers usually have so many problems and limitations that the best front-end in the world cannot hope to redeem.

There is some good stuff above. Me, I lean towards speakers and equipment in general being very personal. I've worked in construction all my adult life. I have a very slight mid range hearing loss. I've designed my system to compensate for that fact. Everything may appear to be overly bright to other people but great to me.

As in most areas in audio, there are many different ways to achieve the desired result, and it matters little, as long as you get there. In my case, I never really started making headway until I acquired some very fine loudspeakers, (Dynaudio Contour 5.4's), which allowed me to make real positive improvements, really for the first time. I could more easily discern positive changes, and wound up with what became a very rewarding and satisfying system. Now, ironically, the only thing I am changing is the speakers, as I felt I had unfinished business with Tannoys, so to that end, I am in the process of having custom 192lb (each) enclosures built for some HPD 315's (12" Dual Concentric) speakers I acquired on Ebay UK. Should have them in the system in a couple of weeks. Not planning any other system changes other than that for now. Gonna be fun.

Best regards, enjoy,
Dan

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.