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

I think, if the prices are adequate, $30k speakers/$70k the rest is an excellent balance. Just match it all well.

I’ve done the totals on the MSRPs of what I am actually listening to and I am still under 30k. I’d love to go either way with 30k and 70k. Either way. (I don’t know what it would come to if I added up the stuff that is in a dormant state. There is actually enough dormant to create an extra system with stuff left over.) My electronics up front : speakers ratio is way heavy on the electronics end. At one time I was in the camp that felt good electronics could make average speakers shine and that poor electronics would bring good speakers down. Now I am not so sure about that. (And I realize that good, average and poor are all relative terms.)

Sometimes comparing different pressings is like comparing different turntables/tonearms of the same brand. Quite illuminating. And I mean comparing all first pressings from different countries.

so many here have completely ignored the question. It was NOT what is most important, it was what should come first.

Nothing is "most important" because it is a SYSTEM. It is the weakest link idea. The SYSTEM can be no better than the weakest link so again, nothing is the most important.

However, we can pick a logical place to start, and that is most definitely with the speakers. They must fit the room and they must be capable of doing what you want them to do i.e. what do you value most because unless you have mega bucks you can’t have everything. You want to play AC/DC at live levels or more interested in string quartets? etc..

Once you have speakers that will be able to do what you want, and that will work in your room, then you can start figuring out what kind of amplification you need to get them to perform, and then you can focus on getting a source that is at least as good as the rest.

So once and for all let’s just drop the ridiculous idea that one part of the system is more important than any other 

Spend $30000 on speakers and $70000 on the rest. 

no budget for cables?