Hook it up right now with lamp cord or whatever you got and start listening. Leave the receiver turned on 24/7 and pay attention, you should be able to hear improvement in smoothness and detail over the first week or so. You want to do this because if you want a system that sounds really good then from here on in you need to no longer buy whatever you think might be good and only buy what you have tried in your system and found to sound the best. Play whatever you have, play the radio if you have to, and leave it turned on even if nothing is playing. Just never turn it off.
What you need in terms of components: the Yamaha doesn't have a detachable power cord or you would want to budget for that. It does have a phono input, which means it has a phono stage, which means you have to decide whether you want a turntable or not. Plenty of budget turntables that will kill a lot more expensive CD players so might want to consider that. Either way you will probably want a CD player. Interconnect. And speaker cables.
With $1200 that would be in very round numbers something like:
$300 turntable
$300 CDP
$300 interconnect
$300 speaker cable
This isn't what you spend, this is just so when you go shopping you have some guidelines to keep you looking at the right stuff. You've already gone and bought speakers that are way out of line with the Yamaha but that's fine they'll be your "anchor" component and plenty good enough to easily hear and know when you bring home something good to try out.
That's the most important thing from here on in: try it out. Never buy what you have not heard. Never! Make it your rule. If not in your own system (preferred) then compare as much as you can in the store. Cables and interconnects can make all the difference, but they get a bad rap because so many of them are crap and the only way to know is bring it home and that's a lot of work so nobody does it and then instead of blaming their own laziness they blame the crappy cables. Just know up front they are mostly crap and make up your mind to search out the good ones.The minute you do you will know it was worth the trouble.
WHAT you buy matters not at all. HOW you buy is everything.
What you need in terms of components: the Yamaha doesn't have a detachable power cord or you would want to budget for that. It does have a phono input, which means it has a phono stage, which means you have to decide whether you want a turntable or not. Plenty of budget turntables that will kill a lot more expensive CD players so might want to consider that. Either way you will probably want a CD player. Interconnect. And speaker cables.
With $1200 that would be in very round numbers something like:
$300 turntable
$300 CDP
$300 interconnect
$300 speaker cable
This isn't what you spend, this is just so when you go shopping you have some guidelines to keep you looking at the right stuff. You've already gone and bought speakers that are way out of line with the Yamaha but that's fine they'll be your "anchor" component and plenty good enough to easily hear and know when you bring home something good to try out.
That's the most important thing from here on in: try it out. Never buy what you have not heard. Never! Make it your rule. If not in your own system (preferred) then compare as much as you can in the store. Cables and interconnects can make all the difference, but they get a bad rap because so many of them are crap and the only way to know is bring it home and that's a lot of work so nobody does it and then instead of blaming their own laziness they blame the crappy cables. Just know up front they are mostly crap and make up your mind to search out the good ones.The minute you do you will know it was worth the trouble.
WHAT you buy matters not at all. HOW you buy is everything.