In what order of VALUE do you place these items

[Zak33]

Choose your costs guys.

[Steven_McL]

huh ?

[Zak33]

too quick dude......poll up now

[Howard]

Amp, then Speakers, then Source

Speakers are only as good as your amp I reckon

So I just voted for that one

Nice to see you posting more equipment-related stuff Zak This forum needs more of it

[5lab]

30% 30% 30% 10%

personally i'd put speakers first.

[Knoxville]

Gotta say Amp, then Speakers, then Source tbh

Without a good amp even the greatest speakers in the world are gonna sound crap, the guitarist part of me wants to say source first though cos the the best p.a set-up is useless if your playing an encore strat through it.........

[Zak33]

ignore cable guys.....just these three!

[Russ]

speakers > source > amp

[steve threlfall]

speakers then source then amp

Amps- to be fair i know nothing whatsoever abbout any kind of amp so i shouldnt really comment.

Speakers are very important- a top class source with bush speakers wont sound too hot and nowhere near as hot as a bush source with top class speakers would sound.

[Butuz]

Speakers 50% , then Source 30%, then Amp 20%

Speakers are most important because it doesnt matter how good the signal being fed to them is, if theyre crap, crap sounds will come out.

Source next, because if you put rubbish in to any amp/speakers you'll end up getting rubbish out.

Amp last because there are no real moving parts, the size/quality of capacators, quality of resitors and quality of power supply make the most difference here.

Its important to get a balanced system. No point in having £1000 speakers plugged into a £100 aiwa midi system. Likewise no point in having a £1000 cd player plugged into a cheap amp and speakers as they will not be able to show your ears all the extra information that the cd player is picking out off the cd.

Thats MHO anyhow.

Butuz

[DeludedGuy]

Speakers 50% , then Source 30%, then Amp 20%

Speakers are most important because it doesnt matter how good the signal being fed to them is, if theyre crap, crap sounds will come out.

Source next, because if you put rubbish in to any amp/speakers you'll end up getting rubbish out.

Amp last because there are no real moving parts, the size/quality of capacators, quality of resitors and quality of power supply make the most difference here.

Its important to get a balanced system. No point in having £1000 speakers plugged into a £100 aiwa midi system. Likewise no point in having a £1000 cd player plugged into a cheap amp and speakers as they will not be able to show your ears all the extra information that the cd player is picking out off the cd.

Thats MHO anyhow.

Butuz

I concur!

[Lead_Head]

Source > Amp > Speakers.

Altho it's a close call between Amp and speakers... could easily switch them around...

[TiG]

I don't know much about the prices of modern day kit at present as i've got no intention of buying any more at present.

But i'd definitely want an amp capable of doing say 200RMS and speakers that only used 100RMS of it etc.

TiG

[5lab]

rms cant actually mesure volume. i've some small speakers hooked up to a 2x20W amp and they make far more than enough noise, yet if it were hooked up to a fat set of floorstanders it'd be real quiet.

interesting that you guys are saying 'id have to have an expensive amp cos the best speakers in the world sound crap with a crap amp' or something - a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, hence why, imo, its best to balence the costs pretty much evenly (this wasnt the case with vynal, as a cheap vynal player would easily match an expensive amp for quality)

[unrealrocks]

Easily spend the most money on the speakers - if you go into a good hifi shop and they dont mind swapping kit around for you then you realise that they can make the most difference by far.

As far as amps and sources go - it depends on which of both CD players dont make a great deal of difference, although as Knox said a cheap guitar aint gonna sound good. Just today I was at a get together with other bands before a concert and got to put my bass though a Mesa stack - really showed mine up as his Ibanez K5 sounded stunning compared.

[Butuz]

Ignore the RMS figures on your speakers its just a rough and semi meaningless way for the manufacturers to let uninformed people know what sorta amp they need - what actually defines what sort of amp you need to power them with is the Sensitivity decibels at 1 watt and 1 meter. The lower the sensitivity - the more power you need to run into the speakers to get the same volume level, the higher the sensitivity the less power you need to run into them to get the same volume level.

(Impedence also makes a big difference here but as 90% of speakers are 8 ohms impedance i wont go into that further).

90db/w/m (this is around average for low to mid priced speakers) is considered a reasonably easy load thus you wouldnt need more than about 40w per channel to drive them to their max.

85db/w/m is considered a hard load and you would want to be putting at least 100w per channel in order to get to any sort of reasonable volume levels.

some speakers are as efficient as 100db/w/m an in these cases anywhere between 3 and 9 watts will shake pictures off the wall.

With regards to the chain. What you have to bear in mind, is that speakers and to a certain extent cd players have most effect because it is their quality of materials and moving parts that defines the sound. Effectivly all the amp does is power the speakers. The difference between £200 and £1000 speakers are huge. The difference between £200 and £1000 cd player is very noticable if you have speakers and an amp to match. The difference between a £200 and a £1000 amp will mostly be in the power it can put out (say 200 watts instead of 40), The difference in sound is no where near as much as the difference in power. That is why the amp doesnt make such a big difference as the cd and speakers IMHO.

Butuz