Most important link: Source? Pre-amp?or?

Not a fair question. In a well balanced system every component is equally important. Kinda', you'll never sound better than your worst component. Turn the question around to -- "What's the least important component? My vote costs to cables and interconnects. Many high end system builders allocate way to much for these items in their budgets. Be that as it may, the direct answer to YOUR question is the speaker/room interface.

Here is a highly opinionated belief by yours truly. All else equal, speakers are by far the most important component in your system. I would recommend putting 60+% of your overall budget into the speakers, get adequate amplification next, and then make compromises elsewhere (CD player?). I have found the differences between a $200 CD player and a $12,000 combo one very subtle. Try it with speakers and the difference will blow you out of your seat. Also, the speakers are the weakest link in reproducing accurate sound.

should plenty of $$ be spent on the preamp in a home theater system? up to $4-6k can be spent just to produce an adequate sound stage and accurate DSP for presentation! I'm struggling with the same cost-splitting decisions now. I've got $10k to spend for speakers, amp, preamp and sub. One day I go from spending $5700 for B&W Nautilus 804, HTM-1 center channel and nautilus 805 surrounds and getting lesser quality amp/preamp/sub combos. The next day I'm thinking of spending $2800 for the Lexicon DC-2 with full upgrades (best price I've found new or used). Anyway, I'm rambling... my point is that I don't think there's a right way to do it, so just do it and be happy with your decision. I do think I'm going to spend the majority of my $$ (in my case, 60% as Alruhl suggested above: $5700 speakers out of $10k budget) on speakers... any comments? thanks for reading... -baz

Hi ElDragon; I've asked myself this question about 10K times. I think Onhwy61 had a good response that I agree with-- the speaker/room interface is absolutely critical. Other than that, and I know it's a cliche', but a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. We did some remodeling a couple years ago, and I went from a small listening room to medium-large one-- the difference in music character/quality was huge, ie much more than any componet or speaker change. In my case the change was good as I previously had too big speakers in a too small room. This observation assumes at least a decent set of components to begin with. I've got a feeling that vinyl lovers are going to say "HQ turntable?" Having said all the above--- I LOVE MY McCORMACK AMPLIFIER.

I have to agree with the speaker/room interface. This is most noticeable when you listen to speaker's at a dealers soundroom then at home, they hardly ever sound the same and most of the time worse provided that your dealer has a well treated room. I have been struggling with this problem while trying to incorporate a high end stereo system into a home theater for an all in one approach. I can tell you I failed miserably and will be splitting up the home theater in to 2 seperate systems. The problem was the room I was using for home theater, since it is the same room we normally entertain in acoustically treating it does not pass the girlfriends muster and mine as well. It sucks the bass out like a hoover so much so that I must use 3 subs to attain the bass response for home theater and it has terrible reflections that rob the music of it's imaging and sound stage. I have a room upstairs that I will be setting up my 2 channel rig, without any treatment it sounds about 35% better than my room downstairs and I plan on doing some room treatment to make it even better. I am just hoping that the impending room correction devices form Meridian and Perpetual Tech deliver on there promises so we can all rejoice in getting closer to removing the room from the equation.