cost of speakers in relation to the rest of the system

An interesting discussion, as I just was asked today about speakers by the neighbor in our commercial compound for a recommendation for a 5.1 system he wants to set up in his spouse's new studio.  Since I'm the 'local audio nut' that 'does that sort of thing'....you likely know the routine...

He doesn't have the interest or desire to drop major $ into it, but wants something that'll 'sound good'.  OK...another leap into the dark, but wanting to be helpful and not fry his budget.

Polk and Klipsch from PestPry are OK; not stellar, but decent MOR.  For relatively the same $, go listen to a set of ML Motion 4's at the nearest Magnolia (2 hrs. away, make a day of it and have lunch somewhere 'interesting' or have a picnic in a local park....they've got kids).

Why the ML's, and those?  A number of things...1, they run ribbon tweets, which IMHO are far and away the best thing going for clarity and response at the price level.  They also have a good SAF....women are more sensitive to high frequencies.  Some find domes 'shrieky' and generally irritating at high db's, whereas ribbons don't illicit that observation as a general rule.

2) The reviews of the previous buyers....No negative responses, high satisfaction levels, small footprint, attractive looking, everyone likes how they sound, esp. the high end.  And the price isn't stratospheric, he could use 4 front and rear and go for a 'balanced presentation' in a 20' sq. room.  A personal opinion, but he's heard my version and was impressed...

3) They're ML's.  A well-known and well respected company, even by the likes of us.  And they've got good customer service, important for the novice.  And the price for 4 ($700+tax) won't cook his budget, esp. since he's thinking sub and center as well.

4) Since he's thinking sub & center, pop for the ML's that match.  They'll be relatively designed to match the M4's response.  That'll push it just over a grand, but it ought to soar away from the Polk's or Klipsch's and make him and the spouse smile for a long time.

5) They're not power hungry....any decent 5.1 receiver will drive them out of the room if they want to be 'frisky' with volume levels. *G*

Obviously, I told him to take some of 'their music' with them for auditions.  And to keep in mind that they'll sound slightly different in their room than in the demo space.  Ask about the return policy, just in case.  Make the salesperson dial the bass and treble to '0', just because...

...and have fun.  It's supposed to be fun, at the end of the day.

And, at the end of all this, to respond to the OP's query....
Speakers are the reproducers of everything in front of them.  I happily spend more $ on them than anything else, since they recreate the sound we enjoy, subject to taste and expectations.  One can always improve the 'front end', but the improvements are fractional compared to the devices that 'make the noises'.  One can always add Eq to vary for room response, move the drivers about to 'fit the room', and fiddle with treatments to tailor 'room issues'...but that's a deep subject for a newbie. ;)

I've offered to help him set it up.  I want him to drop his drink and smile on 'first song'.  Then you know you've made someone's day. *S*

 I'll kick this soapbox into the corner now....

My price ratio is always going to be a little ridiculous because of my resource limitations and inexplicable urge to learn, build, test, and experiment. At some point I’m going to dig into cables and build better versions of my 11.5g 6 way round braid. I only built these to learn the difference a cable design can make. And a difference it certainly makes. One of the things that I kept reading that reaffirmed my purchase of the Focal 936 is that they have a tendency to exploit the best gear you put behind them. And exploiting a Pass F5 they certainly are! The thing with building stuff is I can build a stack of Pass designs, hunt down a good DAC, make some pretty nice cables, tweak every component to perfection, and still not spend what I did on those speakers. Speakers, if you ask me, are way too complicated for me to build. I have no tools to make and finish cabs. I have no supercomputers to model how they behave. I don't have the money to buy piles of caps, resistors, and inductors to voice the things with. I see a tremendous value in buying well designed speakers because, unlike an amp which if you just clone well upholds the design specs, it takes tremendous resources to design drivers, cabs, and crossovers to sound like anything good. $4000 buys you and obscene amount of quality and R&D in a speaker these days. Minor alterations to cloning a speaker design can destroy it's sound. 

kosst_amojan makes an excellent point: Designing and building good speakers is insanely difficult. In current dollars my guess is you'd need to spend $5,000 retail for something truly great, which would represent 50% of a decent system, however you can get thirty-year-old speakers that sound incredible for a fraction of that thanks to the fact that: There are minimal electronics inside speakers (so easily serviced/upgraded); speaker design/construction become mature technology by the eighties (thanks to a new design hegemony of aiming for a flat frequency response instead of trying to "voice" them, along with breakthroughs in driver construction); and, not least, audiophiles are collectively insane so the second-hand market is flooded. My point being: Buy a superb-sounding, twenty-year-old pair of Vandersteen 2Cs for $600 and all of a sudden the speaker to amp/source ratio goes crazy. There are no hard and fast rules to this.

These ratios are at best guidelines and will vary depending upon overall budget as well.  Ratios at $20-50k are generally going to be more speaker leaning in terms of total percentage than a $200k system.  There's also a general (incorrect) belief that good speakers can somehow fix shortcomings in front end and amp, which is in my experience far from the case.  Ultimately, unless the system builder is relatively new (and needs a helpful guide as a baseline) cost allocation is not a consideration that will be relevant; rather, it should be building the best system possible, and that is almost always a system where the relative performance of all components is similar since one cannot "fix" shortcomings in a poorer (relatively speaking) component and such component will then hamstring and limit the ultimate potential of the system.