Finally stepping into the hobby after 30 years of watching from the sidelines

Others may disagree but I think that having a great amp, often more expensive than speakers, brings great advantage even with modest but fundamentally very good speakers.  Many good speakers are capable of more than they might seem, just give them great source amplification and cables. And wall current, of course.

Well, day 3 is done.  I went to pick up my speakers from the hotel and they wouldn't fit in my car.  Without hesitating, Sean had Harvey drive them to my house and help me carry them in.  Zu is a complete class act company.  

Attending RMAF really helped shape my opinion of where I am and where I'm going in the hobby.  When I started this, I had no clue what I was doing.  Still, I don't know a lot.  However, I do know that I am ecstatic with my decision and I don't see that ever changing.  The number of rooms that I went into that had well over $100k worth of gear was impressive.  In my opinion, most of those rooms sounded terrible.  It makes zero sense to me why you would want to take a pure signal and pass it through countless devices and connections to, "improve it."  To my ears, it was obvious that those rooms tried to do too much for no reason at all other than to sell gear.  

The most simple rooms sounded the most musical and much closer to reality.  I can't tell you how many rooms my wife and I went into and left after 30 seconds because our ears were hurting.  It wasn't because the systems were too loud.  It was because they were totally unnatural.  If you ever hear live Jazz, a full upright bass doesn't shake the room and trumpets don't make you want to cover your ears.  We rocked out for 4 hours in the Zu room last night at concert levels and our ears never hurt once.  Companies need to stop trying to reinvent the wheel for the sake of being original.  Sorry if this offends you, it's just a young punks $.02.

To get me by till we can afford our tubes, I'm going to be buying a Marantz 220.  There is no reason for me to spend $1600 on the Peachtree.  Simplicity is the goal moving forward.  Speakers, Amp, Phono Stage, Table.  That's it.  Oh yeah, LOTS of vinyl!  

I really appreciate every one's help and options along the way.  I may not agree with you and you may not agree with me, but you helped me research and find what works for me and my wife.  We are incredibly grateful for that!  I will be continuing to update as we add the final gear for this system.  We will be building at least 2 more systems in the next year or two and would love to share the experience with any one that wants to listen to good music and check out Denver!  

Thank you all again!

There was a really nice Cary 300SEI, 11 wpc, 300B SET int amp on Washington DC's CL for $2450. Stereophile recommended int amp.  Might be worth looking into....

@inna I'd agree with you on that point.  FYI, I just bought a Marantz 2235b to get me by.  I love the looks of the amp and I'll definitely keep it around somewhere when I upgrade.  

Nice aesthetic with the vintage marantz and blue zus for sure.   Should sound very nice together.  Always good to have a spare no matter what.    How about some pics when all set up?