I know there are no hard and fast rules here but am interested in your views. Say you had £3,500 to spend on a new cd only system, how would you split it up between the cd player, amp, floorstanding speakers and finally cables ? Thanks

Amp and speakers i would drop the most money on and that is what i would look at first then the source , as for source Vinyl first then Streaming , CD last ,

Same here

Amp and speakers

You can get enjoyable good sound out of iPhones and computers but if the speakers are crap and the amp can't drive them and doesn't have the dynamic range then it sounds pants.

£3500 on a stereo would be ficking amazing

£3500 on surround sound. Hmm could be a mess as a lot of sPeaker systems are crazy money this year which doesn't leave much for amplification.

Agree with the above Speakers & Amp for me have made most difference, if you are talking 3.5k maybe Pre/Power and speakers cables will depend completely on taste the set-up lengths and interconnect type, that sort of budget you may be talking Balanced, short balanced cables dirt cheap or make yourself IMHO of course

My stereo has cost me about that amount but I had some good deals and the Power amp was used but if new the sytem Value Slpit would be roughly.

Power Amp 42% (Not sure of the exact price New?)
Speakers 30%
Pre/DAC 15%
Source Streaming 4%
Source TT 6% (Only Cheap Unit for occasional use, a serious unit would be much larger).
Cables 3% (Only balanced and Digital Cables + Speaker for Stereo)

If we go for the Money out of my pocket split -
Power Amp 22% (Not sure of the exact price New?)
Speakers 39%
Pre/DAC 25%
Source Streaming 4%
Source TT 7% (Only Cheap Unit for occasional use, a serious unit would be much larger).
Cables 3%

Think I'd better upgrade my speakers as they are only about 10% of my system

Go by your ears don't worry about percentages.

10% is ok when they're £10k speakers !

Careful - RB's trying to catch us out

I know, It is not like you would have speakers that cheap in your system .

Problem is, nowadays there's so many different options at different price points - it's not like the good old days when it was 'source first', or equal split.

Sadly not I keep saving for the upgrade then keep buying bikes. Linda & I worked out that on average we'd bought a new bike every year for the last 10 years !!

It really depends on the room, I have a very small room (9ft square) so there is not massive point spending big money on speakers. My current breakdown however is-

Speakers 15%
Stands 6% (although should be 20% as I got them as a bargain off eBay)
Amplifier 28%
CDP 10%
TT 28%
Cart 10%
Cables 3%

But thats screwed as well by the fact that the total budget is £500.

If I had the same sized room, I would spend on the following- (£3.5k budget and no CDP)

Speakers 15%
Stands 3%
Amplifier 70%
CDP 7%
Cables 5%

There's a lot of preciseness going on in this thread....

Agree. And the trouble with precision is the margin for error.

Your system sounds what?

Oh you spent 11% on cables

There's your problem. You should have spent 10%

Mine was based on specific components I would buy.

For example, I know the price of the ATC SCM7 and Target Stands that I would get for that budget with my current room.

Spend it ALL on speakers then sit looking at them all day and stroking them, you don't need an amp or source.

Because of the natural movement of our arms and hands, the speaker should ideally be curved for efficient stroking.

Just thought I'd add that.

They why he went for Monitor Audio

probably best they're not plugged in then...

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