I plan on buying my first OLED TV this year, and hope to use these LaScalas for double duty, music and home theater. This is my first time trying to coordinate all these components and frankly it is starting to get confusing, so please forgive any foolish questions that I may have failed to find answers to researching on my own!

I bought a pair of gently used AL5 trade-ins and am picking them up next week from the store. Any tips on what to look for/ask when inspecting them? This and the TV are the are breaking my bank so the rest of the setup is going to be budgeted as best I can.

I think it makes sense to hook these up to an AV Receiver pre-amp, then hook the AV Receiver with HDMI eARC to the TV's HDMI eARC. I will also connect a 4k Blu-ray player, FiOS cable box, and 4k Apple TV using HDMI to the (Receiver or directly to the TV), not sure which is optimal?

Back to the LaScalas, I will use an amp (~$1,200 budget) to power them because it should be better/worth it to match a stand-alone amp quality/watts the LaScalas versus using the AV receiver powered channels, right?

Will connecting the LaScalas to an AV receiver degrade the experience, or cancel out the benefit of using pre-amps and a stand-alone amp? Basically, am I an idiot for trying to spend big bucks on nice speakers and a matching amp only to hook them into an AV receiver?

Lastly, in terms of Home Theater, what is most critical to me is adding a subwoofer for bass and also considering a center channel (budget permitting). I have a 10" monolith powered subwoofer I plan to use for now (I know it is probably not worthy of the LaScalas but I am broke now) and also some Klipsch fives I could cannibalize for surrounds perhaps. My main issue is that dialogue these days seems shoddy so I was hoping to add a center and don't know where to start. I read an article saying to match another LaScala as the center, but my bank account slapped me.