Is there a magic formula for spending on components in a system

Many tell the tale of the magic formula. It is said it is buried high in the Andes, or maybe in the deepest Amazon, then again quite possibly on Mt Doom, in any case you will know you are close when you trip over a unicorn and fall into the Fountain of Youth.

There is no magic formula but if you want someone else with expertise to determine it for you consider an integrated device that you can just add most any speakers to.

A good example is the Bel Canto c5i which has high end sound and everything most any one might need already built in for a very reasonable cost, especially used.

Many other good ones also.  Just find one with the power and features you need. 

I wouldn’t lose any sleep over this one. Here’s why. I’ve actually built whole systems using the preferred approach of budgeting equally to each part- speakers, amp, source, wire, tweaks. Even at a very modest budget level it pays big time to budget significantly for tweaks and wire.

But here’s the thing. With one of those same budget systems I then upgraded one interconnect to something that literally doubled the budget of the whole system. That is, put a $1200 interconnect into a $1200 system. Most would predict this is a waste and would hardly matter. How could a $1200 system possibly show what a $1200 interconnect can do? Well I am here to tell you it can! That one wire transformed that system!

Its not something I recommend or would do. Just saying. Good to know. Because maybe you come across a killer deal on a "Grail" type component. But the rest of your system is way beneath it. Who cares? Sad truth is, all these guys saying Source or Speakers or Amp, they are all just repeating what they heard someone else say, or what worked for them. Its not like they performed some exhaustive comprehensive comparison. Which even if they did well guess what? That was them. Not you. So who knows? 

Frankly I was a lot happier tripping over the unicorn. A beautiful Mermaid brought me to the surface and gave me mouth to mouth, and I could swear there was a little tongue before the angels whisked me off to heaven. I never did find the magic formula. But the music here is to die for.

By far the most expensive part of my system is the room.  Whatever you do, if you truly care about the outcome and not just being able to say "I have a cool system", then put a good amount of money aside on acoustics and some money and time into learning how they work, and learning how to do measurements and interpret them.  

Your spend on speakers as Al pointed out is going to be heavily impacted by your desire for deep clear bass. I personally, and studies have shown bass has a huge impact on perception, so I would not ignore this.

The speakers and room provide the vast majority of your impression of your system assuming competent amplification and source.


If you are going to include vinyl, you can't go cheap. Good vinyl is expensive and that leads to a different question, do you consider yourself a "vinyl" person or you mainly in the digital realm and quite happy with it. If you are in the digital realm and quite happy with it, then there are many competent DACs at reasonably prices you will like, and you could even look at integrated with DAC built in, though that makes upgrade tough.  If you are vinyl guy, then you may want a DAC that recreates more of that vinyl sound and that is going to cost more.

So .... back to what Al started. Tell us what your approx spend is, what music you like, and what you think about your "sonic" tastes.

The percentages in the magic formula change according to the size of your overall budget.  One size doesn't fit all.