@kota1 That is a great point, if you spent the money on acoustics rather than equipment. I think the answer is you would be surprised how good some lower priced speakers can be. Paradigm for instance has Canada pumping in lots of money because they are partnered with the government for acoustic research giving Paradigm an unfair advantage against other speaker manufactures. Very few manufactures can afford to build with beryllium. My Paradigm B speakers are 7k each for surround sound speakers but they really hold up as a main speaker with a sub. All to say small speakers with a good sub can sound great. So yes putting money into the room is a good idea, with 1 huge caveat. Acoustics is not a science in that it's completely objective like speaker cables there is a lot of science that can't quite state that this room will sound good. A room that is 12 x 18 x 8 is practically impossible to make sound good because of so many common denominators some rooms have no hope and can't be fixed unless you make them very very dead and move the speakers very close to you effectively wearing headphone with speakers.
"A matter of personal taste". We both know you need good cables that shield RF and we both know that smart and reasonable people list their cables as components but in blind tests no one can tell the difference, sure everyone has a story about the audiophile who takes the test " ok are we now using the good cables or the bad ones" and they get it right. That is not a good test a good test takes the physiological testing out of the equation. When you look down the grocery isle at the market and see a beautiful woman then you realize it's your wife that is a good honest test, not setting up a picture of you wife and your old girlfriend with all the psychological bagger they both bring into the picture. The things I mentioned in confusion are not scientifically valid unless you are selling them then somehow they have all the science in the world on their side.