Percentage to spend on Amp and Speakers

I guess there are many ways to achieve the same ends, and not to disrespect anyone else's opinion, but here would be my advice. Forget about formulas that tell you how to allocate your budget. Find one product which you fall in love with which gives you some of the best sound you have ever heard in a system which you have heard. Next, try to match this product with other products which mate well with the first product, but permit you to stay within budget. Those formulas are usually manufacturer or retailer attempts to justify that you purchase some expensive but poorly performing product. There really is not a high correlation between price and quality in high end audio. There are a number of inexpensive products which perform superbly, as well as many outrageously expensive products which perform either miserably or without distinction. If you use your wallet to make your decision as to what amp to get, using some formula based on what speaker you have already bought, you will be doing yourself a disservice. After appearing to overspend on speakers, you might determine that you found an inexpensive amp which mates very well with your speakers and is an exceptional performer in its price range. In this way, you can recover overspending on one product with another while still keeping yourself within budget. Of course you have to be reasonable and keep you eye on the bottom line because if you spend 80% of your budget on an amplifier, it is going to be difficult to purchase high quality companion products with only 20% of your budget. However, other than common sense budget issues, if you liberate yourself from allocation formulas, I believe you will end up with a higher quality system, but still at, or close to, budget. I also believe that you can start your search for appropriate products anywhere in the chain. It is important to assure yourself of the capability of the component. In other words, can this product completely satisfy you musically in a good system? If it is not quirky (present problems to surrounding products such as impedance mismatch, highly inefficient speakers etc.) and doesn't blow the budget, then buy it and start there. Otherwise, you might want to continue looking. Good luck.

I think we are of the same mind Rayhall. The more I think about it, the more the idea of a system price tag repulses me. Example: I am going to build a $5000 system. Is that it? Do you then look at that as a commitment, like marriage? Breakable only under extraordinary circumstance. I find very few of us in our hobby who one day announce they are going to buy a system(with a certain budget), and then go get it. People who aren't serious about the hobby do it that way. Most of our systems seem to be a living thing. Evolving and being refined over time. So I guess I go back to my original point. Buy the best thing you can, make sure you love it, and make sure of your preferences before you buy.

Thanks, Trelja. I had read your posts and I find that you and I are generally in agreement as to the approach. I would just add that with regard to the order of purchasing products there really is no required order EXCEPT wire. Here is where you can look to use the sonic characteristics of the wire utilized to complement or correct hopefully slight frequency balance problems of the previously bought products. When the rest of the system is finalized is when I would start the search for interconnects, speaker cable and power cords.

I disagree. I think the first choice should be speakers, then amp, then upstream, then cable.If you want to "voice" a system speakers have unquestionably the biggest impact. Then amps, then digital front end, then cables. When you select your speakers and your room you are voicing 75% of the system, if not more. The rest is fine tuning. The cabling is micro-tuning. Most of the tweaks are folly.

I guess, Joe, you disagree with the order in which new components should be introduced into the system. I disagree with you that you have to follow any particular order. While I agree that speakers can be most significant in "voicing" a system, my objective is to not "voice" it. I am looking for the most neutral, uncolored, cleanest sounding products I can afford. If all of them are as neutral as I can find, the less chance I will have mating them together. Even so, in the final stages of putting together such a system, I agree that you are likely to find that there are some sonic artifacts which you might want to emphasize or deemphasize. If you have left the speakers to the end, I would still buy speakers which were generally quite neutral, but with a general balance and smoothness that I would find accurate and pleasing in any system in any room. When this speaker system was integrated into my system, I would try to deal with any shortcomings via the interconnects. This method allows you at least the chance of removing one component down the road and replacing it without destroying the sound quality you had originally. If there were any problems with room interactions, I would try to tune the system by moving the speakers. Small movements can sometimes achieve huge improvements in sound. If that proved unsuccessful, I guess I would try room treatment. Also, I think that you minimize the effect of electronics on sound. Different amps and preamps can make huge differences in the frequency balance as well as quality of the sound. I would say be especially careful of the preamp (if you have one, that is). The preamp is to me the heart of the system, since it provides most of the gain (particularly if phono is the source). A bad preamp in an otherwise great system is impossible to hide. A great preamp in an otherwise bad system is still an asset to the system. And what I said about preamps is true to a lesser degree with amps, but it is still true that power amps are very important to the overall sound. As proof that you don't have to do it your way, I am finishing up a system which I started with the preamp, then the amp and am choosing the speakers last, while retaining a 12 year old CD player. I don't claim it will be the best system in the world, but I don't believe that, when fininshed, it will give up all that much to systems which are much more expensive. Anyway, to me, speakers are the weakest link in the audio chain. They are the least refined and the most erratic of any of the audio components and for any need to "voice" or compensate for any upstream deficiencies, there must be at least 3 or 4 speaker brand alternatives. What is going to make the choice for me among those alternatives if I were interested in "voicing" are things like the speaker's bass response, midrange openness and clarity, lack of upper midrange harshness etc. ie. basic speaker performance criteria.