What's more important speakers or amplification?

I'll add another vote for speakers. But if you need to be convinced start with a blind comparison of the Sony and a new amp. If you have trouble telling them apart, you can safely put all your money into speakers. (Provided that you don't choose speakers that overtax the amp, of course.)

SOURCE SOURCE SOURCE.
Do good speakers make up for the bad signle an aveage source puts out no.They just make a bad signal sound bad.Conversly a great source will make an average speaker sound good and a truly great speaker sound great.
The truth is the margins in speakers have lead to the BS about speakers being the most important piece,Its BS allways will be.

No matter how good your source and amplification chain are, bad speakers can break you.

No matter how good your speakers are, a bad source and amplification chain can break you.

In the first example, you can have all of the detail, resolution, musicality that you want. Feeding the excellent quality signal into speakers that are not tonally balanced, have poor soundstage / imaging capabilities, require more power than your amp can produce or running speakers that tend to overload due to compression and / or saturation, etc... will give you a less than enjoyable experience.

In the second example, putting a signal that is harsh, distorted, lacking in tonal balance, clarity, focus, etc... into some very high quality speakers will only reveal the shortcomings of the entire reproduction chain. This too will give you a less than enjoyable experience.

It's all relative. You're listening to and trying to build an audio SYSTEM. Think of it and approach it as a SYSTEM and you'll always have a balanced package. Your system is only as strong as the weakest link, from beginning to end. Sean
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PS... it would be nice to know the rest of your system, room size, etc... so that people can judge as to what they think the weak link is. It is quite possible that you would be better off changing something other than your speakers or amp. Room treatments might make a bigger difference than either of those and cost WAY less ( if you're handy ).

i used to agree with those who are saying speakers until i heard the tiny rega alya speakers. i first heard them with all rega electronics, and they sounded pretty good. then, i heard them with an all-NAIM setup, a cd5, pre, and amp. they were different speakers. i couldn't believe how much they began to sing with the better source.

when natalie says that a good source will make an average speaker good, she's absolutely right. and if some of us really can't tell the differences between amplifiers, why are we in this hobby? seems like the money would be better spent on a nice crack habit.

Generally I agree with Sean. Speakers and Amp should be bought as matched combination. That is especially true for 2-ch audio. In that case, however, we are talking about 5.1 HT system for $3,200, which means building decent entry level hi-fi HT setup. In such setup Sony ES will do adequate job and later could be upgraded. I would allocate some part of your budget(like $500) on decent cabling and spend the rest on speakers.