Survey: HiFi System Priorities

Your survey results will just likely show that there is a divide between the speaker-first people and the source-first people, while the "truth" probably lies somewhere in between the philosophies of the two groups.

I will not repeat one of my last post here....

Room acoustic controls is first and last critical component, nevermind the speakers type or the sources...Only acoutical law could give you the natural timbre experience....Not the branded patented name of your gear by itself alone... Not the price paid save for ignorant and rich people... Sorry....

Audio threads motivated by conditioning electronic desaign market hype are the worst place for understanding audio.... Acoustic book the best....

About your comment,

" My personal view, which I shouldn’t share while I’m posing a survey question but I will anyway, is that most of these folks chasing bitrates would do FAR better if they refocused their energy and money on quality speakers and amplification,...suited to the room and setup correctly. With wires!"

I would agree in terms of bit rate generally as Qobuz sounds best to me regardless of whether it is "Hi-Res" or CD quality and Spotify Premium sounds 2nd best (better than Tidal and Amazon "Hi-Fi") But my perspective on equipment is that you can’t hear what’s not there and you can’t unhear distortion/noise by adding better amps and speakers. I’ve found the improvement in sound quality along the dimensions of presence, detail, and coherence in music from moving from WiFi to Ethernet streaming (with WiFi turned off) to be much greater than that from switching between Spotify and Qobuz. Going from an AmazonBasics Cat 6 Ethernet cable to a Supra Cat 8 cable also made a significant difference as did moving to a dedicated streamer from an PC or iPhone output. You can’t reproduce what’s not already there in the signal & you can’t clean up a signal that’s polluted with jitter and analog noise.

I will say that local files (WAV files) sound best to me. Perhaps because they take a shorter signal path before going to the amplifier than streamed files.

I will acknowledge that this is a personal perspective, as I know other listeners care about different characteristics of music than I do. (e.g., ability to play deep bass, extended top end)

The premise of ' step up ' is a good point of focus which implies a degree
of experience and personal value for a basis.

For me:
Speaker 
Media Preference Source - TT / Phono Pre / DAC / Streamer Transport (PC) / CD Player 
Pre Amp
Amp 
Cables
Starting Goal was a Full Component (Separate) System
The two big surprises for me are - 1) Passive System and 2) How much that came together and how well.
None of it would have come together without a my local retail shop.
Once I had a loudspeaker selection that I had confidence in the obstacles fell (only because I had a very good idea of what mattered to me).
After a brief dable with components an Integrated brought everything together.