I suspect I only narrowly averted getting caught up in this trap! In the past year, I learned the vital importance of two fundamentals -- speaker/amp matching and speaker placement.
I messed around with speaker placement for months with little to show for my efforts before stumbling onto what appears to be an optimal placement. If I’d stuck with the rule of thumb that speakers should be located equidistant from one-another and the listening chair, I never would have found the right positioning and I might well have tried to improve the soundstage via a component upgrade. While that might’ve worked, it would have been an unnecessary expenditure.
I’d always assumed the sloppy bass I found so annoying with my previous integrated was due to the inherent limitations of my stand-mount speakers. It wasn’t until I replaced the integrated with a Hegel H390 that I realized my Silverlines were capable of much better bass and resolution than I’d ever imagined. Not only that but the Hegel seemed to "wake up" the Silverlines, overall. No doubt, the higher current was an important aspect, in this regard. If not for the Hegel, I would most likely have embarked upon a search for "better" speakers which would likely have been fruitless, given the fact that the weakness was actually due to the integrated.
In both of these cases, addressing the fundamentals yielded surprisingly significant rewards and very likely saved me many thousands of dollars.