1. Microphone. Bar none a great mic will have more impact on the end recorded sound than anything else.
2. Preamp. After listening to dozens of preamps in widely varying price points, it becomes painfully obvious that there are just some that can’t cut it next to others.
3. A-D interface. If it’s going to be a digital recording (and let’s face it, 99% of anything newly recorded will be), this is as important as #2.
4. Cable. Not that it’s not important. Just the things above are far more bang for the buck than cable.
I come from a similar perspective in that I'm a professional recording engineer with 20 years experience and a. audiophile to the extent my time and budget allow. I agree with your list except that there are a few elements preempting what you have here:
1. Musician
2. Instrument
3. Space
then microphone, pre, converter, etc.
Though you may have assumed this in your example it cannot be stressed enough that the best equipment in the world won't compensate if any of these elements is lacking.
I wholeheartedly agree with (what I believe to be) the crux of your post in that we're careful to capture as much detail as we can given all the budgetary (incl. time) constraints. Whether we're able to better the playback from what the end listener is capable of will often be debatable. The listener doesn't experience the same constraints the engineer does. We have minutes [to soundcheck and commit to the sound we're capturing], while you have hours [to listen and critique the quality of sound]. Yes to some limited extent, we can change the sound after the fact, but any engineer worth anything will agree you've got to get it right at the recording stage. Back to the constraints, clients expect us to make qualitative decisions quickly and to commit those sounds to 'tape' (really hard disk unless you have the luxury of recording to analog tape).
As an engineer, yes. I spend my money on good mics, preamps, and conversion, as well as studio monitors and headphones I can trust. I use good mic cable, and good snake cable for mic and line-level signals. I believe the father down the.line from the microphone, the less important cable becomes.
At home, I have good sources, DAC / preamp, power amp and speakers. i'm bi-amping to get the most from my amp. I'm slowly upgrading my cables as budget allows. This is tricky because I need four pairs of same or similar length cables. However in the meantime I've spent a lot getting the system updated to where it is now. The sound is on a similar plane to what's in my primary studio, which is of great help to me. Still it's a work in progress.
Cheers,
-c