OP, as a rank noob I'll go out on a limb here and re-emphasize not to spend 25% of your budget on speaker cables unless you already have or already think you have refined listening sensibilities.
MC will predictably blast me for this....and that's okay. That's what we're expecting and we're expecting him to tell us he gets paid for his consulting and if we don't then our opinion is to be discarded. And he well may be correct.
But here is my reasoning for this: I recently acquired a Bryston amp, a Classe' pre amp and pair of Aerial Acoustics 6T towers connected to the amp with a pair of Transparent G5 Super cables. This pair of 10' cables sell new for $2000 and are not considered particularly high end. This whole system is worth about $20,000 new...at least. Don't worry, I'm not bragging, I did not pay for them and I don't get to keep it all.
As you might expect it all sounds quite good. In fact, amazing to my ears. Well as I was shuffling all this gear around I did not want to fool with those gigantic, stiff, cantankerous speaker cables and just used a pair of Transparent's lowest end basic 14 gauge cable.
I could hear a difference. But guess what? Not much.
Then later, for various reasons I used some high quality off the shelf no-name 12 gauge speaker wire.
Guess what? I could not hear any appreciable difference between and the basic 14 gauge Transparent cables.
The moral of this story IS NOT that cables don't make a difference. The moral of the story is that for most people beginning in audio without a trained ear or particularly critical SQ needs, cables are not likely to make a $500 difference in your listening experience with a $1500 system.
You wouldn't be wrong to take MC's advice. He's an expert. But you wouldn't be wrong to take mine (and other member's) advice either since I've done the two bit test for average ears.
And you can always upgrade cables later, right?
Disclosure: I'm keeping the Aerial Acoustics 6Ts and will be buying a modest amp for them and I will NOT be using the no-name speaker wire. But I won't be spending $500 on speaker cables either.
Tip: Check out the "Music" forums here at Audiogon. You'll get great advice on good recordings and source material without all the arguing and posturing. Really pretty cordial over there.
George
