Looking for a good system for my apartment. Any advise?


I have a medium sized living room. Any ideas for this fledgling audiophile?
I'm looking for a decent turn table, amp, speakers and a cd player. Money IS an object so if there is anything you can recommend that won't break the bank but still offer a nice sonic experience (We love classical, jazz and the Grateful Dead).
Thank you.
fojomo
fojomo
@fojomo, if your setup is directly between your speakers, 8-10 feet is usually good for speaker cables. I like the locking bananas that blue jeans cold welds to their cables.  Highly recommend them.  I had these at one point!

Signal Cable Silver Resolution is a step up.  May want to check them out as well.  I had these after the blue jeans.

I can recommend Cullen Cables as well.  My set-up uses all Cullen Cable powercords and Analysis Plus cables.

I’d take the Ragnarok!  The headphone amp is really great.  Later when you get some cans, the Ragnarok will power any headphones really well.  If you get the fully loaded Ragnarok, it comes with a dac, phono stage, headphone amp...  covers many bases.  They offer a 15 day trial as well.  
I believe the Canare speaker cable is one of the best buys in audio. The locking bananas would be nice.

Check out the Blue jeans Cable site. They sell the Canare speaker cable and Belden digital coax.  Both are sold by the foot. It is generally recommended that the digital coax should be 1.5 meter so I would go with 5ft. You might check out digital cable threads on this forum. The Belden cable is so inexpensive it could easily be replaced later. I would not worry about cables too much until you have spent time getting familiar with your system. Always an opportunity to make adjustments at that time.

I would also check out the Signal cable and Cullen cable sites recommended by b_limo. They make a highly regarded cable for the money. 

I have purchased many of my cables used. 50% or less of retail.
Canton Chrono 70 - $1895
NAD C388 w/ Blu OS Card $2199
NAD C538 CD Player $349
NAD C588 Turntable $899 (Comes with Ortofon 2M Red Cartridge)
NAD PP2e Phono Stage $189
Total is $5531

The C388 would have the Blu OS streaming from the unit or you can connect a PC to it directly if you prefer to stream off of a PC.  

Most retailers will give you 10% off which would put you on budget at $4978.  One perk is that all the parts would fit together aesthetically and it would look good.  The other thing is you should get between 30 and 60 days as an in-home demo and your only obligation would be return shipping.  Which, in fairness would not be insignificant.   

The reality is you don't NEED an external phono stage as the C388 has one built in but the PP2e is a nice unit, will give you better sound and would give you more flex if you wanted to try a different cartridge, especially a MC like a Denon DL 301 or something like it in the future.   

Full disclosure, I am a Canton and NAD dealer.  If you are interested PM me.  
I use Canare Starquad microphone cable for interconnect. Buy it bulk for $1 a foot. Starquad is available almost everywhere.

A recent audition put Switchcraft connectors near the pinnacle - WBT. Switchcraft connectors are available from Digikey for peanuts.

Anybody with a soldering pencil can do it for you. Put the dollars you saved into the cartridge. Of course, you could spend the entire $5K on cabling, but I wouldn't - and I doubt if you'll find much better than the above for any money.

IMO. YMMV.