Speakers Don’t Matter As Much As We Think They Do?


When discussing how best to invest money into your system, it’s very common to hear people say, “Spend as much as you can afford on speakers, and then worry about the other gear because speakers have the largest effect on the sound.”

Now it’s never a bad idea to have good speakers and while I somewhat followed that advice early on, as my system has evolved it seems that I am not currently following that advice, and yet I am getting absolutely fantastic sound. For example as a percentage of my total system cost, my speakers cost 15%. If you include the subwoofers, that price is about 35%.

Early on I was worried I would outgrow my speakers and I’d hit their limit which would restrict sonic improvement potential as I upgraded other gear but that hasn’t been the case. With each component upgrade, things keep sounding better and better. The upper limit to speakers’ potential seems to be a lot higher than previously thought as I continue to improve upon the signal I send them and continue to improve system synergy. If you send a really high quality signal to a pair of speakers and get synergy right, they will reward you in spades and punch well above their apparent weight class.

One thing that may be working in my favor is that I’ve had these speakers since the early days of building my system so literally everything down to the last cable has been tuned to work in synergy with these speakers. Had I upgraded my speakers mid way through, I would have undone a lot of the work that went into the system in terms of synergy.

Has anyone else had a similar experience with their speakers? Does anyone have any extreme percentages in terms of speaker cost to system cost like 5% or 95% and what has been your experience?

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I find that speakers are the “most important” part of an audio system, but disagree that they should be the most expensive part. Mine are $6000, about 12% of my total system, and I believe that doubling or tripling the speaker investment will have little effect on total sound quality. Using Goldenear Triton One.R with PassLabs/Cary/EAR electronics and high quality DAC, streaming, and LP gear.
Years ago my big living room system evolved, starting with speakers I ended up hating (mid- to low-end Infinity's), then getting speakers that pleased me enormously (Vandersteen 4s). 

Flash forward 25 years and the same process started playing out in a home office desktop system (nearfield), where I've had 4 or 5 different speakers. Only when the 4th landed (ATC SCM12 Pro's) did it all come together. 

From all this I conclude that when I finally got a pair of speakers that really matters, that gets it done sonically, 2 things have happened:

  • I chose a speaker whose tuning, construction, and design please me more than others (tuning being the most important); and
  • That speaker worked best with my room of all the other choices
I wish it were as simple as jonesing over this or that speaker, buying & installing it, and voila! Great Sound! But it's never that simple.
I have $20K+ in electronics and cables (full Ayre stack plus a very modest turntable....for now) and $5K in speakers (Vandersteen 3A Sigs).  So I'm defintely on the wrong side of commonly accepted wisdom.  I adore my system, and since I got the speakers first I was able to witness how each new bit of electronics improved my sound. As an added bonus, I feel like I can go far up the Vandersteen line--perhaps not as far as the 7--and not need to touch a thing on my front end.