Newbie to the awesome audiophile world

Welcome!

I suggest that you go around the retailers and listen, listen, listen. Visit a high end store too - they may just treat you a whole lot better than the chain stores - at least, that's my experience. And they often have used/demo equipment too. Main thing is to be exposed to various sounds. Planar speakers are very different from box speakers. Vinyl is very different from digital. Etc. Etc.

You may find that you only need to spend half your budget to get what you want. Then again, you may become like most of us here ...

Just don't get conned into spending a lot for cables, a HUGE profit centre for retailers. Sound of cabling is almost uncorrelated to cost, and what you spend on cabling can't be spent on speakers.

Consider headphones. You can get a lot of sound for a few dollars that way.

MC - maybe good for you to watch as well:

Hilarious. Why people keep getting sucked into this pretentious noobs video is beyond me. I thought by now people know comments disabled translates to- "Warning: Video contains indefensible misleading BS".

Start with speakers. If I could do it again.... efficient easy to drive always works best because you have flexibility to get an amp that does not break the bank. If you fall in love with a sound of speaker then get it, I did this and still have a couple pairs of my favorite. I would put my money into a decent integrated or amp and pre-amp that lights up the speakers that I like the best. Enjoy! You have lots of time to get the turntable or digital player or whatever source you will use to play music with so much cheaper. Buy used from audiogon or an ebay seller that has a good rating. If you get real lucky you might find some equipment at a garage sale (do not count on it) those days are gone. My two cents. 

OP, as a rank noob I'll go out on a limb here and re-emphasize not to spend 25% of your budget on speaker cables unless you already have or already think you have refined listening sensibilities.


MC will predictably blast me for this....and that's okay. That's what we're expecting and we're expecting him to tell us he gets paid for his consulting and if we don't then our opinion is to be discarded. And he well may be correct.

But here is my reasoning for this: I recently acquired a Bryston amp, a Classe' pre amp and pair of Aerial Acoustics 6T towers connected to the amp with a pair of Transparent G5 Super cables. This pair of 10' cables sell new for $2000 and are not considered particularly high end. This whole system is worth about $20,000 new...at least. Don't worry, I'm not bragging, I did not pay for them and I don't get to keep it all.


As you might expect it all sounds quite good. In fact, amazing to my ears. Well as I was shuffling all this gear around I did not want to fool with those gigantic, stiff, cantankerous speaker cables and just used a pair of Transparent's lowest end basic 14 gauge cable.

I could hear a difference. But guess what? Not much.


Then later, for various reasons I used some high quality off the shelf no-name 12 gauge speaker wire.

Guess what? I could not hear any appreciable difference between and the basic 14 gauge Transparent cables.


The moral of this story IS NOT that cables don't make a difference. The moral of the story is that for most people beginning in audio without a trained ear or particularly critical SQ needs, cables are not likely to make a $500 difference in your listening experience with a $1500 system.

You wouldn't be wrong to take MC's advice. He's an expert. But you wouldn't be wrong to take mine (and other member's) advice either since I've done the two bit test for average ears.

And you can always upgrade cables later, right?


Disclosure: I'm keeping the Aerial Acoustics 6Ts and will be buying a modest amp for them and I will NOT be using the no-name speaker wire. But I won't be spending $500 on speaker cables either.

Tip: Check out the "Music" forums here at Audiogon. You'll get great advice on good recordings and source material without all the arguing and posturing. Really pretty cordial over there.
George