Words From the Wise

Stop moving things around, stop touching and changing cables and leave your system playing and playing and playing for months!!! I repeat DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING, even when cleaning the dust watch out so that you dont really move things...

A system get better and better the more its components work together...

1. Learn how to listen to music. If you haven't all ready, stop cranking tunes and listen to the music. May seem simple but it's not. It takes practice. Sit down for it.
2. Don't be afraid to buy used.
3. Explore music. If you only listen to one genre of music, you're system won't be worth as much to you.
4. Don't ignore room treatments. Too much bass doesn't mean replace your speakers.
5. If you live in the U.S., you owe it to yourself and this country to try out some U.S. designed and manufactured gear. There's some truly amazing stuff out there.

1) Similar to Thermonicavenger thoughts, if your music doesn't sound quite right and you're a graying boomer, get your hearing checked. You may find out that your hi freqs are not what they were when you were 20 years old. 2) Ask your wife to sit in the manchair and listen to your system. When you ask her what you hear and she says music, you may have tinitus. But she'll have saved you a boat load of $$ trying to clean up the noise. 3) Losing part of my freqs and tinitus has made me appreciate music in a different way. If you can lose yourself in beautiful music to such a point that the ringing seems to vanish, you put together a good system for you. 4) Enrich your Family in music, and be interested in what your kids listen to. It may sound like noise but they'll appreciate your interst. 5) Dean Martin.

1)Put together a system that ultimately you cannot wait to sit down and listen to. If it gives you pleasure it does not matter what anyone else says
2)Buy the best sounding speakers you can find
3)Then buy Power amp, then Preamp, then source
4)There is unending advice on cables but lower price cables will work just fine. Use the power cords that come with your equipment
5)Enjoy the music

It's great that someone revived this older thread, which I hadn't seen. Here are my two cents:

1. If you can, dedicate a space for your gear and make that room audiocentric; and even if you can't set up a listen room, spend time positioning your speakers and dialing in their location in your room.

2. Know what’s possible, visit as many showrooms as you can tolerate and try to connect with local people who are in to audio.

3. Learn how to listen critically; build your own personal list of reference recordings and sit with someone who can help you learn to hear subtle differences bn gear (think of it like a wine tasting: when you initially start you may be able to detect subtle differences bn products but may not have the language to describe those differences very well).

4. You’ll generally get much more satisfaction out of new music than new gear.

5. Be patient in assessing audio gear; you’ll hear new things with different music.

enjoy.
e