How do you determine how much to spend on speakers

Just because it's pertinent and works, I'll interject this once again... and from time to time for the newbies and other's.

A great front end makes even decent speakers better.

Determining your goals in advance will make your speaker choices fewer and to some degree easier.

Easy impedance loads and good to very good efficiency ratings will also afford one far greater flexibility as one tries this and that with regard to system components (amps) along the way.

Middle of the pack $4K to $6K speakers can sound like greatest speakers on earth when the front end attached to them is up to snuff.

Great speakers do not make great front ends... but fine electronics do make very good speakers great. true too there are some very good quite forgiving loudspeakers on the market and even so so gear will make them sing pretty well. Apart from those units however, refined well heeld and resolute speakers require the same in the signal being fed to them.

The keys will always be the same... room size... room acoustics... and the amp feeding the transducers being mated properly to their particular needs.

Systems that are balanced will yeild results beyond the sum of their parts.

So spend what you wish on squeakers but do remember, it's a symbiotic relationship and not a parasitic relationship. Speakers which remain at one third to one half of the total enterprise should be sane enough choices.

The short answer IMO seems to be to spend what you can when you can with the notion in mind that speakers do play a significant role, but not THE role in an excellent sounding system... as everything matters... and I do mean everything.

1/3 to 1/2 of your budget on speakers

It's funny to go back and look at my old post and now with all the changes I've been through with my system and what I viewed as important then and now, ha... I think my speakers are right up there in importance now with everything. Here is how my $$$ was spent on the new system and it is pure magic IMO.
Preamp-14.5%
Source-11%
amps-19%
speakers-19%
Racks-12.5%
Conditioners and power cords-14.5%
interconnects and speaker cables-9.5%

The above for me is all important. If I had to determine what goes last in the event of a down size, it would be very difficult. I would say the last things to change in my system would be the speaker and or racks. I would rather downsize my components if I had to and get the max out of it by placing it on my racks. That said the rack maybe would go before the speakers. That said I think its important not to leave anything undone and make sure you get stuff that works well together.

AT least $20k be a sport!!

Let your ears decide, I figure by the time it's all over I'll have at least 20K in electronics feeding my Thiel CS2.4's. They really are that good of a speaker! Or at least I think so