cost of speakers in relation to the rest of the system

Get get the best sounding speakers that you can afford that best match your system sound signature. Stop worrying about price ratios. If it means that your speakers cost 500 or 50,000 it doesn't matter as long as they do best what you need them to and it is within your budget.. 

For those who love the low distortion, transparency, and natural timbre of Quads (and other good ESL's), but need more volume and/or bass, the Eminent Technology LFT-8b provides all that for $2499 retail. VPI owner/designer Harry Weisfeld endorsed!

The experience I've had, having owned many pairs of speakers (as I'm sure most here have), is that a well-engineered and great sounding loudspeaker can be obtained relatively affordably. Some examples are: Monitor Audio Silver, Wharfedale (certain models), Totem, B&W, Martin Logan (especially ESL), etc.

I've had my current speakers (Dynaudio Audience 82s) since 2004 and they've never disappointed me. At my system's best I had a Pass Labs X250.5 in front of my Dyn's, and I was stunned how well they played together.

That experience greatly impacted my perception of how much quality could be attained in speaker reproduction at $2500/pr, since the amp was 4x higher in cost than my speakers. Almost any audiophile I know would call that match-up a no-no; my experience, however, disagrees with the conventional wisdom. My Dyns truly got out of the way and let the openness, transparency, warmth, command, and finesse of the Pass amp come through effortlessly.

I guess my philosophy more than anything is system synergy, not price points, whether discussing speakers or anything else in the chain.

Current System:

Dynaudio Audience 82s
B&K Ref 50 and ST 125.2 amp
Cambridge Audio Dacmagic and Jolida FX Tube Dac
XBOX One for Blu-Ray
APC S10 

At $5500, my restored ESL’s are the least expensive component in my system, where the other end is the five times more expensive Kuzma Stabi M/4Point.

My current setup is 90% on speakers.

The setup in my new house with semi-dedicated room will be 90+% speakers/room treatments.