Best bang-for-buck purchase you have made?

Philips MFB 545 active speakers for 1200 usd, made in the early eighties. 3 ways speakers, three in-built amplifiers (75 watts, 50 watts, 25 watts) with 12 inch woofers. Lovely full bodied sound of the seventies, with a good dose of dynamism and speed. Actually, to hear a violin concerto on these speakers are revealing: there is an orchestra behind the violinist. No more hassle with speaker-amp-speaker cable-power cable matching. It works well with the supplied Chinese pcs (Although I have recently bought VH audio flavour 4 pcs.)There are bass and treble and volume controls, so I could adjust the sound to the quality of recordings (typically, when I play - very rarely - pop or rock music, I need to reduce bass level).

Home-made corner bass traps. Cost all of $40 for materials for two of them plus about 20mins to put them together. They do an excellent job cleaning up the bass frequencies. This "product" has given me by far the best improvement per dollar spent I have ever had.

In terms of buying something that someone else made, I would say that my Denon DL103R cart is pretty much the cat's pajamas.

Slimdevices Squeezebox (paired with a Benchmark DAC-1). Has TOTALLY revolutionized my listening. Entire music collection now ripped to FLAC, plus frequent listening to Internet Radio (mainly Radioio Acoustic and Pandora). Now I have "whole house audio" in addition to my main listening room, and am listening 10X more than I ever did before!

Blue Circle USB Thingee DAC. $169 plus a 19.95 3 ft USB gold plated cable from the Shack. It runs everything off my PC in fine fashion. Installation was a no brainer, make sure to set all the levels up on the PC.

VBR files seem to sound the best. I haven't ripped anything in Apple lossless or wav yet for comparison.

I was able to get HDCD using the Windows Media Player with the CD in my puter. WMP does not play well with iTunes, so make sure you shut iTunes down first.

I should mention this is my first new audio purchase since 1978 when I was able to buy at dealer pricing.

It's the wave of the future folks ... there aren't going to be a lot of "redbook" CD stores down the road. Time to get computer literate or the iPod generation will take over.

Hmm.. It's probably a tie between my purchase of a minty pair of slightly used floor-demo Hales Revelation Two's (Sapele finish) at near dealer-cost from my local dealer when Hales went out of business, or my score of a vintage Pioneer SX-434 receiver for only $10(!) at a neighbor's garage sale last summer, original box included. That little 15 wpc gem has nary a scratch on it and all the lights work perfectly! I just love listening to the quiet FM tuner while basking in the glow of that classic blue dial! I was marvelling at how good my iPod sounds through this little receiver and the phono stage is pretty good, too.. Awesome bang-for-your-buck! And the Hales aren't bad, either ;-) -jz