i could go any number of ways, but, I would always start with high or reasonably high efficiency speakers because I tend to only like lower powered amps; even if I had an unlimited budget, it would be a low powered amp (pushpull or singled-ended tube, perhaps a First Watt solid state amp). To save a lot of money on amplification, I would build an Elekit 300B kit amp which would hardly dent the $40k budget (I think one with decent transformers costs around $3k).
Among the decent sounding high efficiency commercial speakers, I would consider an Audio Note AN-E at whatever quality level I could get while spending up to $20k or so. My other choice is the Charney Audio backloaded horn speaker with the AER driver ($17k); I would seriously consider this speaker even if my budget were $150k.
The rest would be spent on sources (music server/DAC, primarily, not enough budget to also get a worthy vinyl setup), cabling and power line conditioner (something from Isotek).
Among the decent sounding high efficiency commercial speakers, I would consider an Audio Note AN-E at whatever quality level I could get while spending up to $20k or so. My other choice is the Charney Audio backloaded horn speaker with the AER driver ($17k); I would seriously consider this speaker even if my budget were $150k.
The rest would be spent on sources (music server/DAC, primarily, not enough budget to also get a worthy vinyl setup), cabling and power line conditioner (something from Isotek).