Which area of components to spend the most $ on? Boy I was wrong all my life!

@whipsaw: Yes, the new CD player costs 8 times more than the older, but again check out the budget breakdown.

• Contour 30 @$7500 + CD 5005 @$500=$8000
• Concerta2 F36 @$2000 + SA11S3 @$4000=$6000.

Speakers are $5500 cheaper, $2000 cheaper combo, SO much better sound!

First find the sound you like. No point trying to get great analogue  sound if you crave digititis. Then allocate by bang per buck. And then, what @almarg said.

You may find that some things give precious little bang for buck in the system you are envisioning. Scrub them until you've optimized everything which gives more value. Start by scrubbing cables or power cords or fuses that cost more than a few bucks. When you have upgraded all those caps to styrene or teflon, all those resistors to nude Vishays, that cartridge to a stone body Koetsu, then, and only then, maybe.

IMO. YMMV.

Let me challenge the majority wisdom here.

Yes, the overall quality is that of the weakest link, yes if the signal starts bad in the beginning can't improve down the link

But those are all qualitative statement. Let me try and put some quantitative in that, albeit subjective I realize.

Thing is that the difference between a mid priced CD or AMP (not to speak of the cables) and a top of the line one is minimal. Say is a 90 vs a 100. While the difference in sound quality between equivalent mid priced or top speakers is like 10 to 100 !

Say that any component degrades to an extent an ideal perfect sound quality of 100.

You start with 100 because you have a perfect CD. But then you have just medium quality speakers that get that down to 50.

Vice versa with a mid priced CD you may start with a 90 but keep it to 90 or 80 because of your top of the line speakers

In other words, yes, the weakest link, ok, but you should look into what component of your chain has the widest influence on sound quality and that would definitely be the speakers.

Industry pushes electronics upgrade because they are easier to swap IMHO.

So my eventual 2 c: spend 90% on speakers, 9% on the fron end and 1% on cables !!!

The opinionated speakers extremist

Wait until he rips the CDs onto a NAS and spends that money on streamer and DAC ..... pull vs push demand and correction.

I still follow 35% speakers, 30% source, (unless vinyl and digital then x2) 25% amp - 10% sundry breakdown as guide

Speakers play the music...gotta be good!  NSOTA in source can be had relatively cheap these days.  Also, many great integrated amps available as well.  As for cables, they are ubiquitous and can also be had reasonably.