By far the most expensive part of my system is the room. Whatever you do, if you truly care about the outcome and not just being able to say "I have a cool system", then put a good amount of money aside on acoustics and some money and time into learning how they work, and learning how to do measurements and interpret them.
Your spend on speakers as Al pointed out is going to be heavily impacted by your desire for deep clear bass. I personally, and studies have shown bass has a huge impact on perception, so I would not ignore this.
The speakers and room provide the vast majority of your impression of your system assuming competent amplification and source.
If you are going to include vinyl, you can't go cheap. Good vinyl is expensive and that leads to a different question, do you consider yourself a "vinyl" person or you mainly in the digital realm and quite happy with it. If you are in the digital realm and quite happy with it, then there are many competent DACs at reasonably prices you will like, and you could even look at integrated with DAC built in, though that makes upgrade tough. If you are vinyl guy, then you may want a DAC that recreates more of that vinyl sound and that is going to cost more.
So .... back to what Al started. Tell us what your approx spend is, what music you like, and what you think about your "sonic" tastes.
Your spend on speakers as Al pointed out is going to be heavily impacted by your desire for deep clear bass. I personally, and studies have shown bass has a huge impact on perception, so I would not ignore this.
The speakers and room provide the vast majority of your impression of your system assuming competent amplification and source.
If you are going to include vinyl, you can't go cheap. Good vinyl is expensive and that leads to a different question, do you consider yourself a "vinyl" person or you mainly in the digital realm and quite happy with it. If you are in the digital realm and quite happy with it, then there are many competent DACs at reasonably prices you will like, and you could even look at integrated with DAC built in, though that makes upgrade tough. If you are vinyl guy, then you may want a DAC that recreates more of that vinyl sound and that is going to cost more.
So .... back to what Al started. Tell us what your approx spend is, what music you like, and what you think about your "sonic" tastes.