A New Hi-FI Hierarchy

[Macca]

The cats are a lot smarter than us

[Mike A]

There are plenty of times when I think their IQs are way higher then mine

[Welder]

There are plenty of times when I think their IQs are way higher then mine

Hmmm, can’t say I think the same applies to dogs.
Sunny, does pretty much what I tell him. How stupid is that!?

[Yomanze]

I don't think there is a hierarchy as such more a synergy between what components you choose to put together. Some speakers are sensitive to room interactions, so this is something to be aware of in particular... amps don't really care what room they are in though unless you put a Nait 2 in a concert hall.

People criminally underestimate the importance of a decent DAC or CD player though, and I certainly don't think a Musical Fidelity M1, DACMagic etc. are "high end" - they just offer good sound.

[f1eng]

The ancient addage that if the source is poor there is nothing that the amp and speakers can do to put it right is indisputable, even obvious.
OTOH the room speaker interface can certainly throw away everything gained by having a good source.
ALL speakers have some interaction with the room they are in, with the possible exception of the Gradiente Helsinki. Omnis, bipolars and planar speakers add a large amount of the listening room acoustics to the soundfield. All speakers have a bass interaction with the room depending mainly on where the speaker is in the room.
IME the position of the speakers in the listening room is the most important thing to get right, and no source component I have tried of heard of can overcome the shortcomings of getting this bit wrong.
Personally I would say spending more than £5k on a stereo if you have to put it in a room where you can't optimise the speaker position (living room layout or wife preference, for example) is a waste of money.

Generally I would say the OP is pretty well spot on, and the old over-simplistic advice did not take enough important parameters into consideration, and was, if we're honest, marketing lead advice intended to sell more Linns...
It doesn't make marketing sense for a salesman to tell a potential client that getting speakers in the right place in the room is important if it means his wife will object!

[Nevalti]

In the 70s the advice was speakers first. My first system had Goodmans Mezzo SL speakers (don't laugh) which were well reviewed at the time and I thought sounded great in the shop but less good at home. Over the next few years I tried several other amps and several cartridges but none of them made any significant difference.

It came as quite a shock when I eventually found that the speakers simply were incapable of revealing the differences in the components I had auditioned. Get the speakers wrong and you may be wasting your time tweaking the source.

Oddly, even though the speakers would not reveal the difference between amplifiers and cartridges, I could hear a very clear difference between a good recording and a poor one. I had a direct cut version of Thelma Houston's 'Pressure Cooker' which was clearly and obviously way above a normal record.

[Macca]

It came as quite a shock when I eventually found that the speakers simply were incapable of revealing the differences in the components I had auditioned. Get the speakers wrong and you may be wasting your time tweaking the source.

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They do have to be pretty poor speakers, or broken, for that to be true, though. IME a modern, cheap plastic tweeter is capable of a very high standard of resolution.

[nat8808]

As you say, original advice was about how to allocate your budget so maybe an update list would also be about allocating your budget perhaps?

Times change, technology has progressed. It has probably progressed (progression meaning better AND cheaper) on the digital source front more than amplification and loudspeaker tech both probably improving the least whilst prices rocket!

So in terms of budget spent, it's probably turned upside down with speakers first simply due to current pricing and source last due to tech improvements.

Then we have a very healthy secondhand market so again budget wise it's random and all over the place dependant on what you can find for what prices.

So really your list Martin is an attempt to list out the relative scale of influence of each aspect. In a way, it is something only to keep in mind rather than anything you can follow. I for example would be seeking out the very best recordings AFTER I'd got my system working almost prefectly, else in a sense they will be wasted, your money tied up (unless you're taking into account possibility of increase in value).

The room you have your system in might change but you've speakers too large but got the synergy between amp and speaker right...

As I say, you can't really follow it as such, only keep it in mind.. unfortunately.