Do you belong more to souce first or to speakers first school of thought ?

the hierarchy of priorities is not the same at all levels of overall system performance.

for low and medium level system performance (1) speakers dominate the performance equation, followed closely by (2) the speaker/room/acoustics relationship, then (3) the speaker/amp relationship.

use to be that sources really varied in performance. these days finding a decent/cheap quality digital source is simple. and with streaming even media is a non issue. and decent analog is also easy to find.

so the days of the source limiting most system’s performance are in the past.

towards the top end of system performance it’s the room and sources + media that are more dominant than speakers. lots of good speakers. but great rooms and top level sources are still significant past a certain level of speaker performance.

the tip top digital or best tapes and original pressings + a really super sounding room takes the prize.

Amp first approach is less common but I can understand that. To a degree I would follow it too because I want to use tube amplification, though not necessarily SET, and some speakers just won't sing with tubes.

I think, I almost fully agree with what Mike said, generally speaking.

! agree with @hilde45 🤣

Mike

Speakers first camp here. That way you can make sure your room layout is good for the speakers and the amp matches the load requirement for your speakers