[R_burke]

The music is the anchor.
    As I reflected about all the hardware I've owned over the years it occured to me that its like a moving set of goalposts. Some components I've kept for years because the quality could not be improved unless I spent a lot of money. Then technology would advance and out the door they would go because a significant upgrade could be had for sane money. I havn't bought an amp in 10 years. I bought new speakers 2 years ago. I got a SB3 less than a year ago. As I thought about it, I realised that the ONLY thing that hasn't changed, since I started this hobby, was the music. If Abbey Road doesn't sound good on it, I don't buy it. 

   I like it, but for me it is Rubber Soul

[srclose]

The speaker-room interaction seems to stand out first.  But the problem is a little like evaluating reading.  Comprehension depends on an interrelated sequence of events, and an outright failure at any point can derail the whole process. 

[hmen]

1 - Speakers
2 - Room
3 - Amp

[Kevin Haskins]

It is true that the loudspeaker-room interface is where things get technically the ugliest. 

I think the question isn't really a good one though.   Its like asking a fish what the most important body part is to swim.   Its the entire design of the fish, shape fins and the interaction of the entire body that make it function as God designed a fish to function.   

An audio system is similar.   You have to study the interaction of the whole system, understand where the largest hurdles are (room/loudspeaker) and not forget the dorsal fin, gills or tail.

[Daygloworange]

My credit card....

The best answer so far!   

If your credit card is a good one, then speakers are the most important item. If you were to listen to a stellar front end driving a small single driver crossoverless speaker, and then listen to it driving a good 4 way speaker system capable of flat 20Hz to 20KHz playback, there is no comparison. There is no mistaking which is which.

We recently held a blind amp comparison, with over a dozen quality amps being fed by a modded SB3 set up (sans pre-amp), and feeding some very resolving 3 way speakers in a fairly well treated large listening area. While all the amps sounded different, the character defining item was definitely the speakers. If I were to switch the speakers, everyone would have been able to pick them in a blind test. In this case, not with the amps. Even the owners of the amps could not have picked their amps blind in this set up. They all could have done it if we switched speakers.

I was curious as well as to which item carries the most weight for me. I have had over a half dozen speakers in my system over the last year and a half for critical listening, and with the amp comparison, I am firm in my belief that you need to go listen to as many speakers as you can, with a consistant demo library you are very familiar with, and choose the one that sounds best to your ears.

Then build a system around those.

The second largest improvement you can do, is improve the room acoustics you have the speakers playing in. You will yield large gains in speaker performance, while minimizing and endless pursuit of synergy to resolve annoying room/speaker interaction. You will also hear any component differences more clearly, when you do component swaps.

Cheers

[zapper7]

Source
Speakers
Room

[nathanm]

The room\speaker interaction with choice of recording close behind.  Good acoustics enhance one's mood even before any music is played.  They also can make cheap speakers sound much better than you might have thought.  But at the same time a great recording can make you forget the technical stuff. 

[nodiak]

Room
Speakers
Source/dac
Amp
Cables

In the last year and a half I went from a very large room to an almost small one and everything has been changed (except cd transport). Room size/shape was definitely #1 issue, then sizing speakers to it, along with room treatments. Acoustics rule ! Sources/dacs seem to have a bit more sonic variety than amps and pres to me, but I haven't tried all that much different electronic gear. I'm on the cheap end of wiring, Blue Jeans has been the best of the affordable cables i've tried. 

[weirdo]

room size and speaker placement are critical but the biggest effect besides that is the source. some folks strive for an alomost clinical accuracy to their source material by buying CD players with fantastic specs etc. but in the long run musicality and listenability become the most important and thats where a musical player becomes the focus.
I am speaking of myself and my component choice mistakes I guess.

sob.

[Tweaker]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the pre-amp which to me is the heart and soul of a good system. Think of the job it has to do, primary of which is passing along the  signal from a source to the amp without buggering it up in the process. I think there are lots of great amps, speakers, and source components out there in audio land to choose from but I believe, arguably, that great pre-amps are a rarer beast.
I've owned Acoutats by the way and I shudder to think of how the 2+2's must have sounded being driven by a $300.00 Rotel amp.

[mcgsxr]

An interesting, and duly noted, open ended question, that many folks are taking in cool directions.

Tough one for me to answer, but the more I think about it, the more for me it is:

1 - speakers
2 - source
3 - amp
4 - room

ZIP up that firesuit Mark, here come the flames from the astute ROOM folks out there.   

Allow me to express why, for me, this is how I stack rank.

I have made a wholesale shift in my system that was static for 10 years, over the last 3 years.  Not a single cable remains from what I used to run.  Period.  Thanks AC!

Of the system I run at the moment, that for the most part has me very happy, the piece that started it all off is the speakers.  The addition of the b200 Visaton driver on OB changed the way I perceive music.  Call it the coherency of the single driver thang, call it the idiocy of some loony Canuck, whatever, it is what I then based my system on.

That led to my public amp swapping, that has astutely been called "using the downfall of the amp to match the downfall of the speakers" by a member I completely respect - I mean that, I take that as an accurate description of what I happen to call "synergy" of those open baffle speakers and the single ended Class A EL84 amp I use now.

Early on in the amp swapping arrived the SB3.  Subsequent modding by Bolder and that signalled the sale of my tubed preamp, a DAC, a PS for the DAC, and various cables.

After the speakers, but before the source and amps, came my moving houses, and thus having a new, larger room to play in.

So, when I look at the order of how I settled in on the system I use today, at this point, I stack accordingly.

Would room treatments vastly improve the sound?  Perhaps, but as it is currently an unfinished basement, with no walls etc, I am less likely to invest.  Crap, I have to come up with 20K to finish the darn room, and more for a pool table, THEN I can sort out how to best treat the resultant room.

All the parts are important, but how you build your system likely defines their stack rank order, for you.

All the best,

[Wind Chaser]

Tweaker,

I've owned Accoustats too.  There's no denying a good source and amp have their part, but in addition to hearing Accostats driven with a modest Rotel amp and CDP, I've heard / owned a top drawer source and amp plugged into relatively modest speakers - Magnean MG-1 imps.  The superiority of everything upstream is of little avail if the speakers aren't up to task.  Those Maggies were horrifically veiled compared to the Accoustats.  The inexpensive Rotel electronics plugged into the Acoustats sounded far better.  Better to have a speaker that can deliver with lesser electronics that a poor speaker with great electronics.

[WEEZ]

The preamp is important..no doubt. Maybe more than the power amp.

But I still say, speakers.

WEEZ

[mjosef]

You can run a good cd based system without a preamp...

[nathanm]

Would room treatments vastly improve the sound?  Perhaps, but as it is currently an unfinished basement, with no walls etc, I am less likely to invest.  Crap, I have to come up with 20K to finish the darn room, and more for a pool table, THEN I can sort out how to best treat the resultant room.

You may have to spend a lot to make it look nice, but getting enough absorption in there can be ugly-but-cheap.  I mean, you could do the whole bare rolls of Owens Corning thing if you wanted.  Although it does not address bass problems, even adding a fair amount of thin foam to a room's walls helps considerably.  But then, you already have a "basement with no walls", so that in itself should guarantee you theoretically ideal acoustics!

[Tweaker]

Wind Chaser,
My experience with Maggies and Acoustats has been the opposite of yours.
I purchased a pair of SMG-a's factory direct years ago and while I really liked them right off the bat they just didn't sound as good as I thought they should. I was using a Carver amp at the time. I borrowed a friends 200wpc Adcom and they still didn't sound great but there was a slight improvement.  A local stereo shop let me borrow a small B&K amp, ( a model that was apparantly a clone of a Van Alstine amp), and now we were cooking. "Horrifically veiled" they were not! I ended up buying a B&K EX 442  and  I think that was perhaps the most musically satisfying system I have owned in many ways. I had a British Fidelity preamp as well and that was also a critical part of the puzzle as the B&K, Adcom, Parasound and even a Conrad Johnson solid state preamps that I tried just couldn't make music by comparison.
 I then, foolishly, sold them to a friend and purchased a pair of Acoustat Spectra 22's and suffered with them for years trying different cables, D/A converters, and even buying a vacuum tube preamp trying to get them to not sound so bright. I finally gave up and sold them and am convinced the only way they ever would have sounded as good as I felt they could would have been to pair them up to a high power vacuum tube amp.
These are both speaker brands that are notoriously unforgiving of upstream components, in particular the amplifier, and good examples of the importance of having good quality gear to feed the beasts.

[nodiak]

Hi mcgsxr, but, but, but...I thought you were onto room treatment by your corner loaded system, huge amount of fiberglass, and diffuser ceiling!
Don

[Wind Chaser]

Wind Chaser,
My experience with Maggies and Acoustats has been the opposite of yours.
I purchased a pair of SMG-a's factory direct years ago and while I really liked them right off the bat

That's bizarro, Jerry.  However one thing I found with Acoustats and electrostats in general is you can't just set them down and expect much.  Most people don't have the patience or expertise to figure out what it takes to discover their true potential.  Maggies by contrast are much easier, with the one exception of the Tympani series.  Sorry but the SMG-a is at best 10% of the Spectra.  Too bad you never tapped into their potential.  You'd have been floored...

In 1982 I didn't have much patience or expertise; but I had spent over 20K on my system.  Setting it up the best I could do made it sound like a 2K system.  I explained my frustration to the dealer and Upper Sound sent out their resident expert.  I left him alone for the afternoon and 4 hours later I entered the Twilight Zone.

[95bcwh]

people seems to have forgotten that there're ampstand/racks that sells for thousands which is "supposed" to open up the soundstage, improve the imaging, more cymbal, more naturalness, more extended high....

[Housteau]

First of all you need a good source to reproduce.  I think that much is a given. 

After that, the most important component is the speaker and room listener interface.  If you have a room with bad acoustics, and/or the speakers or listening position is set-up wrong within it, then nothing else matters.

You can own the very best equipment and it will not mean a thing, because a budgit system set up properly in a better room will sound better.  It would be like owning a very fast and expensive exotic sports car with nothing but dirt and gravel roads to drive it on.  It will sure look great, but you will never be able to enjoy its full potential.