Quote Originally Posted by GMichael
I believe that balance is the key to everything. To say that one thing is most important is a watse of energy. The chain is only as strong as it's weakest link. If you skimp on any one thing, you won't get the most out of the rest.
You sound like you should be working at Revel... LOL...

Seriously though, I actually agree, you shouldn't ignore anything in the signal chain... However, some things will require more attention than others.... And something being "important" doesn't mean you have to spend more money on it than other areas...

That's an issue I've long had with "source first" advocates... Just because the source is critical, doesn't mean that you must spend the most money on it.... Same thing for the room.... I wouldn't spend more money on room treatments than speakers (unless my room was totally unsuitable for playing any kind of music in - though I'd more likely just pick a different room to set up my hifi in).... A preamp is a critical component and can easily kill the sound of a good system, but many persons use cheap, single input passive pre's in expensive systems (if I'm not mistaken, E-Stat uses an approx $300 DIY passive pre with approx $30K speakers - so if you were to judge his priorities based solely on cost you'd conclude that a pre is unimportant)....