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

This source/speakers match is a very interesting and complicated subject by itself.

Matching doesn't mean efforts to literally directly compensate, it usually requires a lot of thought and experimentation. It is easy to completely screw up the sound, to throw it in disarray. But I would guess that, generally speaking, your choice of table/arm/cartridge/phono stage should not be too different than your choice of speakers. The idea is to make the speakers sound their best, not to make the speakers sound the way they don't really want to sound.

So, in the end the source might be more important but you choose speakers first and upgrade them last. At least, that's how I see it.

I bought my modest speakers 25 years ago but the sound that I have now is light years away from what it was. Everything else was upgraded.

Good source will sound better on mediocre speakers than mediocre source will sound on good speakers. 

I think that there may be something to this.  

I would have defined "source" as ALL the electronics in front of the speakers, but I am thinking for the purposes of this discussion, that "source" refers to the first front end component in the system? 

Good source will sound better on mediocre speakers than mediocre source 

I consider my CD player and TT mediocre and they sound great with good speakers and bad with OK speakers. So I guess it depends on the definition of mediocre. To translate this to numbers:

$200 CD player - $1000 speaker or 

$800 CD player - $400 speaker?

(as speakers budget shouldn't be 1:1)

Note, I didn't forget one "0" from each number - that's what I meant 😊

My Magnavox All In One came with speakers.

I got dizzy (more than usual) when I dished out $172 at KMart. 

I remember how proud I was pushing it out of the store, strapping it on my motorcycle and riding it home thru town.  Yeah.  Mine.  Eat your hearts out.

Years later a friend gave me an old pair of Roger? Ls3 something something speakers.  Smaller than what came with it.  But it has to do.

I don’t mean to be the poor old sod but what comes first brain or hands?