Honestly, I have been so surprised by the performance of the REF 6 that I have faith that the folks at Audio Research are going to make a difference with the SE upgrade. They are in my hometown, so there could be all sorts of confirmation bias, local bias, expectation bias, and you name whatever other biases that might be going on in my head. The bottom line is I am spending about as much as you spend on a power chord to upgrade my REF 6 
I looked it up. They actually do quite a lot for the SE upgrade. I would do it for sure.
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Pretty neat having Magnepan, Audio Research (arguably each top-5 in world in speakers, amps/preamps respectively), plus Atma-sphere, Audio Mirror, Anticables, Van Alstine, and I’m sure others I’m forgetting as highly regarded MN audio companies - I’m with you on the local pride. Not too shabby.
Edit: and can’t forget bel canto!!
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Audio Research has been making great preamps for decades & my experience with their customer service over 26 years, most recently last week (bad left channel tube, which, though 4 months past warranty, they replaced without charge) has been entirely positive.
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I’m pretty excited I have a 6se coming end of September, they are super backed up right now. My dealer put the order back in mid June! Happy to hear you are happy with it!
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| Speakers | 18.5% |
|---|---|
| Room Treatment | 15.9% |
| Preamplifer | 14.9% |
| Cables | 12.9% |
| Analog Front End | 12.5% |
| Digital Front End | 9.5% |
| Racks & Powerline | 8.1% |
| Amplifier | 7.7% |
Here’s my breakdown shown as MSRP.
- Speaker System (Sanders 10e with one Magtech Amp and LMS) = 30%
LMS = Loudspeaker Management System (crossover, EQ, room correction, time alignment) - Amplifier (second Sanders Magtech for woofers only) = 9.7%
- Analog front end (TT, cart and phono pre; Rega RP10, Rega Aphelion2, PSA SPP) = 23%
- Preamp (PSA BHK) = 10.6%
- Transport (PSA PWT) = 5.2%
- DAC (PSA DSD) = 10.6%
- Cables (Audioquest iconns, power & Sanders speaker cable sets) = 4.4%
- Regenerator (PSA SP3; source components only) = 3.8%
- Subwoofer (SVS SB-3000) = 1.7%
- Room treatment (GIK tri-traps) = 1%
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Good morning my fellow Americans, you all thought that I was that dude from Holland.
Well I am not.
I am IRS.
And I will contact all of you in the next couple of weeks.
Because as you all know, the government needs more money and it seems you have lots to offer.
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Congrats on your purchase @minnesotafats!! Warned you of the risk auditioning a Ref 6… it is the heart of my system, to keep on topic at list price it is about 18%.
Happy listening 
I appreciate the wisdom and the warning. 
This is a very interesting thread.
Below are the percentages in my system. These only include the two channel components as I have my surround system tied into my two channel system. So, my speaker, cable, and electronic percentages would be higher if I included the surround components.
Based on MSRP prices:
Digital Front End 48.5%
Speakers 27.5%
Amp 10.3%
Preamp 5.0%
Speaker cables 3.7%
Other cables 5.0%
So, I probably have too much invested in digital and not enough in electronics. I considered upgrading my amp earlier this year. I sent an e-mail to my amp manufacturer asking if it would be worthwhile to upgrade to one of their higher end amps. They replied that I would be better off with upgrading power supplies or room treatments. So, I listened carefully to my amp again and decided to keep it. It controlled the bass well, resolved enough detail, and vocals and instruments were realistic. All things we want our amps to do well.
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| System Parts: | Cost Percent: | |
|---|---|---|
| Speakers | 18 | % |
| Turntable | 11 | % |
| Cartridge | 1 | % |
| Integrated Amp | 11 | % |
| Dac | 21 | % |
| Power Regenerator | 18 | % |
| Sub | 11 | % |
| Cables | 11 | % |
**Note, I used MSRP.
It would be interesting if someone summed up each percentage and then applied “wisdom of the crowd” to determine the most “correct” allocation of price to component percentage for a good system.
25% speakers
25% preamp
15% regenerator
12% poweramps
11% cables
8% powered subwoofers
4% source
Scraping this information would provide averages of what people who responded to this thread have spent. It would tell us nothing as to what is best or “correct.”
Spending standout extremes may be the best, spending the average allocation could be the worst.
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Do you mean weighting extremes? I would agree that would interesting.
You don’t feel seeing a bucket average of allocation would be interesting to see as well?
I agree. I like to see the various approaches and allocations, but summing up and parsing this data probably would be misleading.
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I do not think it would be of any practical benefit at all.
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speakers 18.5%
poweramp 17%
dac 12%
subs 11%
room treatments 9.5%
preamp 7.5%
regenerator 7.5%
turnable/carts 7%
cables/interconnects 5.5%
cd/sacd 4.5%
I guess the decision is subjective, id agree.
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