What is most important part of a system?

Al.....*clap*clap*clap *clap*clap*clap *clap*clap*clap*

Thanks for being tonight's voice of reason & rationale...;)

We all 'tweak' 'n 'fiddle' with whatever to achieve some form of goal that scratches that itch that drives us to do so.  Twas always thus.

I enjoy reading the details and commentary about the various forms and 'cures' for those itches.  It's the 'potions 'n lotions' and their applications that never cease to...uh, amaze...*L*

Keeps me coming back...;)

(speakers...MHO) 

Thanks for all the replies. Of course everything is important in the system. As I mentioned, every component including cables were all high-end. You cannot just expect a $10K turntable sound the best with $100 speakers. 

In my experience same speakers and some other components sounded much better with the turntable. I never heard this much of a change with any other components before.

Once I had Nordost Blue Heaven interconnects. I wanted to try the Alpha Core Goertz interconnects (cannot remember the model). The sound was warmer. I know that even a cable (opening another can of worms here?) can make a difference but the difference with my last experience was a "WOW!" difference.

This is how I would put in order:
1-Source
2-Room
3-Speakers
4-Amp
5-Pre-amp
6-Power
7-Cables

There is an expression that someone who represents himself in a courtroom has a fool for a client. Now, I don’t want to be too alarmist here, but I believe that expression can also be applied to the listening room. 😀 And I’ll go out on a limb and speculate that the reason why many audiophiles are always in upgrade mode and can’t get no satisfaction is because, drum roll, if you don’t learn from the mistakes of the past you’ll just keep on making the same mistakes. How can you explain why some audiophiles have had, let's say, twenty systems or fifty systems?

My audiophile answer is the loudspeaker/room interface, but my real answer is my wife and family.  Without them how much would I really care about how my system sounds?  Call me sentimental.

OP, your final analysis has a complete dependency on what turntable and what CDP was used to arrive at that conclusion. Different models of each would have resulted in a different conclusion. All things being constant including the listening room, listening volume, and the music content, I personally think changing the speakers will make the most sonic difference in a system.