What is the most important component to consider while building a new system?

Speakers can only play what is fed to them, therefore they are not the limiting factor. You can have a fully capable speaker and not come close to realizing great sound if something upstream is messing up.

Same goes for the source. It can deliver everything you need only to be held back and made to sound bad by what's downstream of it.

That would leave the amp and the cables. Since most amps nowadays can do journeyman duty of such a high order as to have many sound similar, that would leave cables to consider.

To me, it seems that most speaker cables are just variations on a common theme with hardly any make doing real R & D in thinking outside the box. I think I've found a make of speaker cables and they've solved the riddle of the Sphinx, as far as I can tell.

All the best,
Nonoise

Speakers are most important.  Without good speakers you cannot hear any difference 

@david_ten

OP asked:
"What is the most important component to consider while building a new system?" Component. Singular.

He did not ask "What ARE the most important COMPONENTS to consider while building a new system?"

Hmmm? Hmmm indeed. I’m outta here. Even a little "chicken or the egg" is much more than I care to ponder. :)

 I would go with the most
expensive Component DAC
you can afford.   Also you would have 3 DAC,S laying around the house  thinking Audiogon is sure going to hammer me when i sell them 

ps566 posts07-16-2021 8:46pmI reiterate- no speakers, no music.  Seems obvious but hey this is an "audiophile" forum, hence "common sense" is often not all that common.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And 50 yrs later we are still asking this Q..

Let this thread be the final word on this matter.
Yet for some reason, amplifiers continue to facinate audiophiles interests..
Why???
Discussions on amplifiers bore me to death.
I like EL34/KT88/KT120's about equal, any PP amp under 50 watts is all thats needed. 
Pick your lab, they are all ~~~about~~~ equal in terms of sound.

The only thing   important when choosinga  amp is build quality/reputation. 
Thats it, and of course price. 
A $7k intergrated is not any much superior to a  $1500 intergrated in terms of sound.
Its what you can afford. 
Speakers, here is the problem. 
You can throw  tons of money intoa  speaker, and still get less than a  much lower price speaker that does not have the distortion issues a  speaker 10X's its price.
IOW 
a  $3k speaker can  out shoot a  $30k speaker, only due to The Distortion factor. 
My speaker of choice is  magnesium cone midwoofers, due to its extremely low  coloration/dampening  character. 
Any paper material I will not like as it sounds like speakers from the 1970's and all the issues of those early  cone materials.