Why do folks spend more on electronics than on speakers?

These are all great points thank you all for sharing.

@runwell, to your comment about speaker capability. Are you saying that it is more costly to get quality electronics vs speakers at a give price point? E.g. less expensive speakers are more capable than the electronics driving them?

One other thought, what about componet matching? Wouldn't going electronics first kind of limit what speakers one can use? While if one lands on a speaker they like then they can find the appropriate gear to drive it.

@jpan, I should have clarified. In my original post when I say electronics I meant preamp and power amp or integrated as this is the forum for those things. I should have been more clear. I totally get if one added up source, pre/power, cables, etc it’s not too crazy that they could rival or exceed speakers in cost. Espeically if one is using vinyl as the main media.

I guess what I was thinking is when I see a McIntosh stack driving something like a pair Q Acoustics 3050i or Kef R7s. No disrespect to these speakers.

Thank you all for the great comments. This has been a very informative dialogue. I can understand the source first mentality and it does make sense in a way but then one is just pushing the limited factor down to the transducers. The argument for that seems to be, great speakers are cheaper than great electronics; not sure about this personally. I think most would agree that all the parts of the chain are important.

I have always been speakers first because they are so obviously different in sound that it is easier to land on a preference. Also, the space issue. E.g. choosing a speaker appropriate to one's listening environment. Another reason I like the speakers first approach is, if on a budget, it is more fun to me to over spend on speakers and then level up the rest of the system over time. Each new addition brings more out of the speakers and one feels real progress; IMHO. The inverse of this would be, I have awesome gear and then drop in the right speaker and I am done. For some, that might be more appealing but I like the journey as much as the destination.

What sparked this topic in my mind was when I saw some systems in the high four to low five digit range and way their resources were allocated. I wondered about the decision to go something like 80/20 pre/power over speakers. I have literally seen where someone has $10K+ in McIntosh or PS Audio driving a $1K-2K pair of speakers and I thought it odd. I get when you get to a certain level of speakers it’s hard to move up, cost vs performance wise, and spending on electronics makes more sense; I’m kind of there myself. What I don’t get is if the whole system budget is like $15K and someone spends 10%-20% of it on speakers. Are speakers in this price range that good? Maybe that should have been the question all along.