What's more important: phono stage or amp

It's ALL important, system, system, system. Say it over and over again until these sort of questions simply go away.

But for someone who is trying to decide how best to allocate audio funds, just saying "system, system, system" isn't going to help that decision. Yes, synergy is huge, as I and others have posted many times.

I think Herman rephrased the OP's question nicely.

And so perhaps we should proceed from a perspective of "all other things being equal and understanding that it is ultimately synergy that matters most..."

In that spirit, I'd advise to focus on the phono, due to the difficulty of cleanly amplifying such a small signal from your turntable's cartridge. But pay particular attention to the cartridge-phono stage match, and the speaker-amp match. These are best thought of as pairs, since performance on each will depend greatly on what it is paired to.

Very good advice from Roscoeiii. You need to have a phono stage that is electrically compatible with the cart you have chosen and the same for the speaker-amp interface. Read the white paper on the two different paradigms of speaker design to see why this is so impt. BTW, its no accident that these two critical interfaces occur at the two transducer interfaces; i.e., where mechanical energy is converted to electrical energy and vic-versa.

I'm new to the audiophile world so I'm always looking for advice here in Audiogon. It still blows my mind when someone will post a response to a thread with "dumb question" because the question wasn't worded to their liking. Then later in the thread others make well thought out and informative responses to the OP. Seems like this is too often par for the course. To those who have the patience with noobs like me, thanks. By the way...nice thread.

I agree that it is not so much a matter of "what is more important" but more of a matter of matchinc components. The amp must be matched to the speaker and the phonostage to the cartridge. There are plenty of fantastic amps, but only when the amp is matched to an appropriate speaker. I own a very good amp, but, it can only put out 6 watts per channel (plenty, given my speaker). Sure, I could match the speaker with more powerful amps, but, I haven't heard many high powered amps that sound as good. If I happened to like a pair of speakers that needs more power, then, my choice, by necessity would be different.

On a gross level, the phonostage should match the particular choice of cartrige as far as the amount of gain needed. Beyond that, it it like any other component--one must just try different things to determine what matches ones taste and priorities.

If I were building a system, I would concentrate with finding the speaker that I really love (speakers make the biggest difference in sound quality), then I would find an amp that works with that particular speaker. That would then give me the foundation of a good system to which I could add/improve with better upstream components.