Top 10 Snafus to avoid when building a good rig

Minorl, Your points 5 and 6 are really important. People often get lost in complexity of the audio and end up at the mercy of dealers who have different objectives. I second your recommendation to take time and not rush with decisions.

Yes, I'd say not focusing on the "high end" aspect rather than or prior to the "audio" is a very sound piece of advice.

Putting room demisions and acoustic treatments as first priority. Then getting you ac wired compentently and appropriately to your systems needs. Thse are the building blocks of a bad, good, or great system. Just do it, you will not regret it. After that if you get a bad system to startoff it'll sound better than it ever would have if those changes weren't made.

I've been pretty lucky in that I've had good rooms to deal with.

Top things to avoid are-

1-setting unrealistic goals
2-Not learning to be satisfied
3-Spend $50,000 to listen to $1,000 of music
4-Trust others ears over your own
5-Thinking 20 watts is enough for your power hungry speakers
6-Thinking tube watts are more powerful than SS watts
7-Being an early adoptor of new technology
8-Buying anything with the word "magic" in either the product name or company name
9- Buying any gear that relies on mystery technology or a mystery explanation
10- Audition equipment with unfamiliar music

You will find plenty of misinformation and poor advice mixed into this thread.

You pick your authorities, and you get your results.