Where should I spend first — speakers, AVR, or subwoofer?

Speakers first. They make the sound; everything else exists to prepare a signal for them, and no AVR can add back what a speaker cannot reproduce.

The split that has served our customers well: half the budget into speakers, with the front three getting the lion's share; a quarter into the subwoofer; a quarter into the AVR. Then adjust for your room. A large open-plan space pushes money toward the sub and speaker sensitivity, because you need SPL at 4 metres. A small closed room lets you spend less on output and more on quality.

The under-rated spends. First, the subwoofer. Cheap subs are the reason home theatre bass has a reputation for being boomy: small drivers pushed past their excursion limits, one-note ports, and a room mode doing the rest. A capable sub crossed at 80 Hz relieves every other speaker of the hardest job and makes the whole system sound bigger than the box count suggests. Second, calibration. It is the difference between owning good equipment and hearing it, and it costs a fraction of any single speaker.

The over-rated spend: the flagship AVR in a modest room. Beyond a point you are paying for channels you have no wall for and power your speakers will never ask for. Amplifier watts do not fix a boxy centre. Sorry.

The reason for the ordering is lifespan. Speakers you choose well will still be good speakers in ten or fifteen years; drivers do not care about HDMI versions. Electronics age in formats. The AVR you buy today will be replaced when a new connection standard or codec arrives, so let it be the part that is good enough now and swapped later.

If the budget only stretches to a good front three and a sub today, buy that and add surrounds and heights next year. Nobody has ever regretted the front three being too good.

Tell us the room size and seating distance and we will apportion the numbers for your case rather than for the average one.