What is proper ratio of money spent on amp/preamp/integrated vs speakers? 1:1?

CD318 can’t disagree with you more.

Electronics can make or break a set of speakers.

How many loudspeakers are resold here because the electronics are not complementary or are just insufficient to derive the best sound quality out of the speakers.

We have a room full of electronics and we can go from $1000 intergrated amps from Rega, Peachtree, and Nad and compare them with the Naim Atom and others, we have the Naim Atom, the Star and the Nova, as you go up in price the sound gets considerably  better.

We have seen speakers literally come alive with the right pairing of electronics.

In one anecdote we mentioned before, we took a pair of Paradigm Person 3F a $10k speaker with Beryllium drivers to a clients house and compared them to a 10 year old set of Dali Helicon 400 at $5k set of speakers on his older Classe  integrated amp. Added a Dac, changed cables and each speaker sounded better, however the Dali's still were sounding better than the Personas in terms of bass response and midrange richness.

Then we substituted a Naim NAC 272 dac preamp with the Naim NAP 250 the Persona 3f sprang to life and sounded far better than the Classe/T+A DAC 8DSD, Bluesound, combo with the Dali Helicons.

The combined dollars to dollars were the same, the Naim drove the Paradigms to perfection and the sound was amazing were on the other combination the sound was good.

Electronics are preserving the sound.

Dave and Troy

Audio Doctor NJ

millercarbon

"If that sounds silly, its because it is."

I see you STILL have not learned the difference between "it's" and "its".  PLEASE look it up! 

In todays world why own speakers that are hard to drive? Hard to drive means more money all the way around and it's no longer necessary to achieve the highest levels of performance.

Marketing "money audio" with today's innovations available is a bit of a scam. I do cut some slack for panel designs but box speakers over $15,000.00 that's over board. Amps over $10,000.00 pretty nuts.

I'm so happy the table has turned and there are $200.00 amplifiers beating the heck out of the expensive amps when used on easy to drive speakers. I'm not talking about high efficiency speakers either, I'm talking about easy to drive.

Listeners are discovering this hobby anew and there's no way around it, why should there be. Simple variable systems designed to play the audio signal instead of trophy systems never really ever being able to be setup properly. And when done so, only being able to play a small portion of the musical collection most of us enjoy.

People pushing the big bucks, keep in mind the kid down the street who has built a righteous listening room voiced to the max, using a simple setup and able to play any recording they wish to the fullest cause they have the ability to tune it in.

Michael Green