Rate these on order of importance:

Changed your mind, Rsbeck?

Nrchy, If you say that the speakers are the least important BECAUSE the can't reproduce what doesn't get to them, then you can't say that the room is the most important, since it can't reproduce what doesn't get to them either!

c'mON Nrchy, nothing has any effect on the signal until it arrives at it! An amp has no effect until the signal arrives at it. How can that make the amps more important than any other part? What type of logic is that?

Nrchy & Marco, all of the arguements that you are using to prove that the room is most important can be used to prove that the speakers are most important - no matter how good the components are upstream, a poor speaker can destroy for what you worked so hard.

Nrchy, how can speakers be the least important if "all things being equal, or even close" is the situation. Some things are more equal than others? Lets at least agree that cost is not the method to determine degree of importance. It might take 40% of the cost of a system on speakers to get an "equal" contribution from said speakers, without stating that they are more important.