Help: ISO Beginner full setup for excellent sound on $2000 max budget

whyistherenopie, you're being gracious and wise, so I'll add some more. :) 

Not trying to berate you, not trying to destroy Omega speakers. Trying to teach you - from someone who is an industry member, reviewer at Dagogo.com - what to expect. 

Here is an exercise; open up two windows on computer and put the pics and specs of the Omega speaker on one page and the pic (sans grill cloth) of the Vandersteen 2 on the other. Analyze the differences, a crash course in speaker analysis. Gain familiarity with the numbers and seemingly not so great differences. Those differences are very important as to expectations oF what a speaker can/cannot do. Whatever speakers you become interested in, do a similar comparison and try to figure out what the specs will mean in real world performance. When I was just starting out about 30 years ago, I didn't pay much attention to specs, and that was a big mistake that would have guided me better if I had a light familiarity with them. 

Spend some time reading about higher efficiency speakers and lower powered amps, and conversely lower efficiency speakers and higher powered amps. Two very different setups with different characteristics in system sound. 

Look at genres of speakers; panel (i.e. Magnepan .7), hybrid (i.e. Eminent Technology LFT-8B), dynamic (i.e. Salk audio), etc. All these brands reviewed by myself for Dagogo.com 

Two ways to go about it; you can have someone assemble it for you. That's easy and no mental work involved, but you have to be ready for anything in terms of results. Or, you have to invest time and effort to educate yourself. Most likely the results will be more gratifying than just copying someone else's system.  

Everyone is rooting for you! I wanted to make sure you really understood/appreciated how vastly different speakers perform. It's all good.  :)

@douglas_schroeder yeah I’ve been oscillating between looking up products that have been suggested, reading 6moon reviews and Audigon forums, talking to some friends who are doing this right now, reading through others posts of people who have responded to this forum to see if anything is insightful, looking at transaction reviews to see if folks responding are reputable sources or if their customers trusted them, and trying to get an introductory lessons, via wiki or youtube, about physics basics for how to approach best sound, best use of power, best room setup. I’m trying to ask a lot of questions to start piecing together an image of the creature I’m blindly touching and trying to draw with the limited information I have that kind of feels an elephant (speaking figuratively). All the information hasn’t fallen on deaf ears, but there’s only so much time in the day to get these things done.

I appreciate the patience, the patronizing from some folks is understandable, but not really a helpful approach if you’ve got somebody who wants to learn but can’t leave your house to ask a shop, and I don’t know of many shops in my area that would care much about this subject if they even were open. I’m doing the best I can with the resources I have been given. Just know your suggestions have been looked at and the information I wanted to gather is in a spreadsheet along with the other suggestions made my folks. It just seems a bit foolish to start making a pie when you’ve never opened a recipe book about pies before, don’t have a family recipe in your back pocket, and don't really know what a pie is yet. 

The way I have always discovered information was to ask a lot of questions, and I apologize if some of these questions are beneath folks, or silly, or wrong, or I don’t what i’m talking about. I’m well aware of that, I stated it in my first post. I want to build this on my own, I don’t want this just handed to me from a record shop, all my reading has led me here, to Audigon, which is the whole purpose behind coming here and asking you all questions: you keepers of sacred knowledge.

So, whoever is reading this, I appreciate your help, know that I’m going through everything that people suggested, including you @soix , your suggestion was one of the first I looked at. Y’all have pointed me in some great directions so I’ll come back when I have further questions. Or if anyone wants to PM me you can, a few have and have been super helpful so far.

There will always be no pie if ya spend all your $$$ on a fancy plate...

you got great advice on Vandersteen Model 1 ( there is a pair of 1c on the Oceanside C-list right now for $200 w Soundanchors stands. A NAD 3
series amp with streamer, add a nice Schitt phono stage $128, MoFi or Rega entry table, Ortofon Blue, Spin Clean for your records !!! and wire it all with Blue Jeans cable... as advised you might also get lucky by calling Klaus and scoring a Kahtargo amp - a sonic beast
I don’t charge $500 to help people, I would ride your A to finish whatever school you are attending...

Also what geographic market are you in when things reopen ?

you could also get an Elac/NAD/Rega system that would sound and look great, be under warranty and leave you money for a tweak or three..