For the most part I agree with Rcrerar. I've heard systems at dealers though that bummed me out on a set of speakers that were really better than they demoed them. But yeah I think the more you spend usually the better the sound, all things being equal.
Revelation
So I was down at the local hifi dealer, its been a while, and I decided to listen to a LP in the store that I heard many many times on my own system and you know what my modest system relatively speaking, sounded similar if not better then the mega show room system with the 10k arm and the 30k preamp and 50k speakers. I was in disbelif. In my opinion there is not need to spend buckets of money to achieve the last 5 or 10%. Of this this is bad news for hifi dealers but I suspect they realize this too.