You obviously have concerns about the "room" (perhaps better termed "environment") all this gear is going to work in. And rightly so, based on your description. So please don't spend all your budget on the gear just to put the best gear in a room which wont allow you to appreciate it. Spend some of your budget on room treatments (whether its specific audio products like reflection/absorption panels, bass traps, HFTs, whatever; or generic things like curtains, rugs, etc) and you will get a better result in a bad room from mid-level gear than from high-level gear. (The dealers will hate you for this of course). Remember that its very unlikely that what you hear in the dealer's show room will be what you hear when you get everything set up in your own listening space, unless you take steps to make that listening space as conducive as possible to reproducing music well.
confused and don't know what to do
We would like to buy a nice audio system and also have this double as a surround sound but listening to music is the priority. We have listened to many speakers but have settled on the B&W 804's. Now the challenge is to select a receiver and all the other accompaniments we require. We have a little challenge in that our home is a condo and the outside wall is all glass. The space is combined kitchen, living room, and dining room all open with hardwood floors and hard tile on the walls of the kitchen and a lot of granite counter tops. It seems that every where we go, the recommendations are different depending on what the store is selling and of course, the sales people would like us to buy the most expensive. What would give great sound without going crazy. We are thinking about 2 tribe sub woofers and space is limited and an in wall center B&W speaker but we don't know what we are doing and don't want to throw our money away. Help! Too many choices and we don't have enough knowledge. Thank you so much.