the answer has to do with your total budget.
if your budget is under $20k, then spend 60-70% on speakers, spend 20% on the best amp you can buy, and 10% on a good bang for the buck CD player (or dac with a volume control if you already stream or own files) with a volume control. cheap digital is remarkably good. relative to how bad cheap speakers are.
speaker performance will be the dominant attribute or determent to any budget system. investing in sources is a waste if the speaker is marginal. a great speaker will make everything else much better.
if your budget is over $20k then it’s a total free-for-all on how you do it......assuming you do the speaker part right. you cannot overcome compromises in a speaker.
get the speaker choice right and all the rest is trivial.
in my mega buck system, you could plug my phone into my amps and it would still sound awesome. but throw a cheap/average speaker into my system and it would sound....cheap/average.
if your budget is under $20k, then spend 60-70% on speakers, spend 20% on the best amp you can buy, and 10% on a good bang for the buck CD player (or dac with a volume control if you already stream or own files) with a volume control. cheap digital is remarkably good. relative to how bad cheap speakers are.
speaker performance will be the dominant attribute or determent to any budget system. investing in sources is a waste if the speaker is marginal. a great speaker will make everything else much better.
if your budget is over $20k then it’s a total free-for-all on how you do it......assuming you do the speaker part right. you cannot overcome compromises in a speaker.
get the speaker choice right and all the rest is trivial.
in my mega buck system, you could plug my phone into my amps and it would still sound awesome. but throw a cheap/average speaker into my system and it would sound....cheap/average.