Poll: Most impactful component

For me the most critical component is myself. Sitting back and just enjoying the music is all that is needed. Second would be the source. Even my old garage system sounds good streaming through my ifi zen blue. Can’t tell if it’s the dac, the implementation output from the zen or the clean streaming content or all the above making a chain. 

Speakers determine the character of a system. I think of  them like raising kids. I used to think that I could influence my young kids to act/live like I wanted them to. Now I realize they are who they are and are largely born that way. My mom would say that kids come into this world with their bags packed. I could only influence my kids  5 to 10%. Speakers are the same. They have a built in personality, and I can only move their sound 5 to 10% with system and cable changes. I was on a "more resolution" kick for several decades. That led to speaker choices of B&W 801 matrix, and Wilson Sasha 2s. I spent forever and lots of  $ trying to move their personality to a less harsh more musical sound with components and cables. I then bought Rockport Cygnus Speakers and I love their inherent  sound. Component matching is easy now as I am adding components that complement the speakers sound, not ones that try and muffle or change a sound character I hear as too bright. The lesson I learned is that the speaker is the primary determinate of your system's sound, so I spend as much or more than I should on my speakers.  My caveat is that these impressions are from one set of ears, in my room, with my components, your milage my vary.  

Speaker...

Source.  Nothing can fix a bad source.

As digital sources all sound the same, I can see how folks assume the speakers make the biggest difference. I maintain that, in a vinyl-based system, the source is most important, with phono, pre, power, speakers in descending order of impact. Of course, any system is only as good as the sum of its parts—the corollary being that a weak component can bring it all down.