The most important decisions are: "What is my budget?" and "What speakers do I buy?". Set your budget and don't even worry about other components until your speakers are selected.

Remember, this is where the music signal, which has been passed from electrical component to electrical component, is finally transformed from electricity to mechanical energy and then to sound waves.

I suggest that you consider your choices of electronics and wire as "fine tuning" of your speakers. Your speaker choice will set the primary boundaries of your sound reproduction system.

Until you have selected your speakers, you don't even know how powerful your amplifier should be! You don't know whether you should use warm sounding electronics such as tube equipment like Audio Research, Vincent, and Rogue Audio; or use smooth sounding transistor equipment such as Vincent, Jeff Rowland Design, Cambridge Audio, Rega, or Music Hall, if your speakers need brightening up.