How do you determine how much to spend on speakers

Find a pair you love the sound of. Find the price and then you'll know how much to spend.

If it were me, I'd buy used to begin with, on Audiogon. And start with a pair of Magnepan 1.6s at less than $1000. Then a matching pair of amp and preamps, the BAT VK-3i preamp and the BAT VK-200 amplifier at about $1000 and $1200 respectively. Then a good cd player, like the Jolida A100 tube player for about $900 new. For a total of around $4100. Later, you could do surround sound by getting another amp for surround speakers. If you want a good subwoofer, I suggest an Era, for the additional few hundred, making it just a little less than $5000.

In any case, have fun.

Sincerely, waltcertain

If you get Magnepans then you can spend as low as 10% of your budget on speakers :)... ha ha ha ha ha ha to everyone else...

Just having fun. But its actually somewhat true. If you look through virtual systems Maggies tend to get paired with much much much more expensive gear. Means they are very good value.

With 5K you can buy a wonderful amp new.

With 5K you can buy a terrific source used.

With 5K you can buy, with a lot of patient searching, a magnificent speaker, used.

Having the one and only 1 ohm speaker demands the system be built around that. My monos did coincidentally cost 5K, the Source just 1K, and the wires .005K. I only payed 1.5K for the speakers. With my preamp costing 5K too, that would make my speakers just about 9%,

Even at that, it is still the speaker I would build a system around , there being none other that interests me.

Heard the Sjofn Guru system at the RMAF 2007. Pretty good sounding system for $3000. That's the amp,cd player and speakers in the package.
Extremely hard for an individual blend a system that is that balanced and synergistic sounding. It' very difficult to mix and match components as was exemplified in some rooms at the RMAF.