What Is Most Important?

Engagement. If the system, modest or mammoth, engages you then it's all good.  If for whatever reason it doesn't engage you, you'll never be happy. The Large Advent was far from perfect, but with a good 30-60 w/ch amp, and a decent turntable, they were engaging with almost any type of music. An NAD 7120 20 w/ch receiver and a pair of Magnepan MMGs (in a perfect room for Magnepans) was transcendent, if not loud. The Sonos Ones Streaming Amazon }prime UHD are stunningly engaging in a smaller room, especially after being tuned with their TruePlay DSP - and they're under $400 a pair. One the other End, a pair of Wilson Sasha DAW fed by about $40K of Jadis tubes and a VPI HRX/Koetsu front end made mincemeat out of a $100K budget - and my ears, in the best way possible. These systems couldn't be more different, and that's my point. The one thing they shared was engagement. They made you want to listen to another song, another album. They engaged you.

A good recording and a good room for sound. 

The performance.

To start your sourse is technically the most critical for your quality and musicality

is won or lost here ,a good quality dac or turntable is essential 

in this area you buy cheap no matter how good the rest of your system 

it will destroy the musicality as a whole if you try to sacrifice in this 

most critical area.