What is most important part of a system?

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

I can sort of agree with this order, as long as the recording is considered as part of the source. i.e. Personally, I find the recording quality to be at least as important as the source quality.

1) Source/Recording
2) Room/Speaker interface

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?

As one who has done a lot of experimenting with gear through the decades, I can own up to this.
Again, for me, the problem falls back on the recordings. Some recordings just sound better with different equipment. I think I would probably change gear less often if I had more systems. Then I could tune them to suit my tastes to different styles of recordings.

Have a system for bright recordings, a system for warm recordings, a system for 80's digitized recordings, a system for high resolution quality recordings, etc.

I was at a fellow audiophiles home about 10 years ago who had systems setup like this. A SET/horn system, dynamic/SS system, dynamic/tube system. His main system even had one turntable with 4 different arms/cartridges/phono stages. He used a different arm/cart/phono stage for different types of recordings.

Unfortunately, I am forced to try to find one system to do it all. 
While a multi-arm turntable is not out of the realm of possibility, I'm not there yet.
As time moves on, and the recordings in high rotation change, so does my opinion of my systems sound. It's like trying to hit a constantly moving target.
I suppose I could just listen to the same 50 recordings over and over again, the ones that make my current system sound it's best........nah.

@onhwy61 that's not sentimental, that's keeping it real. Perspective is your friend, thanks for the reminder

Doug I agree 100%, good example is Mike Lavigne and Albertporter this are audiophile who knows what they are doing, you can have all the expensive gear but if you don't know what you are doing, you can't max their performance.Especially Mike L, His room is every audiophile dream. True, it's easy to make mistake, when you don't have good experience in this hobby.Doug thank you, this a very good post,.

Geoff,

+1 your post

I have not had nearly as much upgraditus as others. I believe it is because I have chosen carefully and wisely. I don't try to achieve a sound or sugar coated flavour filled sound. I seek accuracy and total neutrality. My thrills come from the music and the recordings and realistic convincing presentation that conveys the true dynamics of live music and real instruments (requires more than 120 db of clean headroom). Audio systems should be like a great camera lens - as clear as possible.

 If you stick to this goal rather than chasing different flavours (as you would with good wine) then swapping stuff is not necessary because the goal remains fixed and achievable in incremental fashion. Others will just say I have tin ears.

 I believe most equipment swapping audiophiles are just chasing their tails because they DONT know what they are trying to achieve and end up chasing every pretty skirt they see, getting nowhere other than having a lot of fun in an aimless chase with endless equipment rotation. 

jayctoy, thank you for the complement! There are only a handful of people who can do audio on a scale as those men.

A thread like this will result in lack of agreement because there are different types of audiophiles; "Music Lovers" which I classify as Mediaphiles, the typical Audiophile who is a blend of media and gear junkie, and persons such as myself, the System Builder, who enjoy making systems as much as hearing the music. It should be no surprise, then, that the methods and results of the three groups will vary widely.