1. Research, research, research. If you have a local high-end audio retailer, check them out. Most are very helpful. There is no substitute to listening to equipment you may buy. Do a lot of A-B testing. Forgive the obvious, but bookmark and organize your folders in your browser so you’ll have articles and YouTubes you found for a later time.
2. Take your time. Resist impulse buying. Have fun learning. It’s a project, not a purchase. It’s more than a hobby and one you should love.
3. Build a playlist of songs on your phone or streaming service you want to sample / listen to when you have opportunity. If possible, place on a thumb drive and keep with you when shopping. It’s not perfect but it is a way to test songs you want to hear.
4. Set a budget. I began flirting with audio about 4 years ago but go serious a little over year ago. All my initial ideas on what I was going to buy were abandoned as I learned more. For. e.g., I was going with a budget that I ended up almost tripling! Likewise, I was focused bookshelf size speakers but ended up with two different sets of towers (after A-B testing several sets). I had no intention of buying a CD player but that’s some of what I learned.
5. Measure your room / space.
6. I’m a reader, and an audiophile friend recommended
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00U58R0Q4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 The Complete Guide to High-End Audio Fifth Edition, Fifth edition, Kindle Edition,
Robert Harley. Many others available, but this is very good.
7. Befriend audiophiles. (Take the know-it-all folks with a grain of salt. Unfortunately, you’ll encounter some rather arrogant / unpleasant folks in retails stores and especially in forums Just my 2 cents.) Like anything you purchase, you are the one who takes it home and listens and enjoys it, not some other person.
8. Decide on your music source(s). Will you primarily use Vinyl, CDs., streaming, DSD... Do you plan to store music locally on a NAS? (If you buy music files, you may want to look into ROON, et.al. at some point.) As much as I love vinyl, I chose not to go that direction. The thought of rebuilding the massive collection I once had was would require time, lots of money, space to store, and I chose not to budget for albums much less turntable I'd want. Turntables and accessories are serious business. So I "settled" on streaming services (I already had Spotify but tried qobuz and finally settled on TIDAL. MQA is a hairy topic with lots of emotions and opinions but I like much of what I hear in both my headphone system and main stereo. And their playlists, like all streaming services, has a decent variety and continues to grow. The TIDAL’s and BlueOS apps are pretty much a mess. Be patient. One nice thing w/ streaming is you can cross platform to all your devices (multi room / zone at home if you want) and depending on your car, you might be pleased with the results. I was amazed how good TIDAL sounds in my SUV.
9. I had 100’s of CDs so eventually purchased a high end CD transport. It was not a big ticket item and easy to connect and use.
10. I chose to go XLR balanced connections (amp to streamer to CD...) Lots of debate but in the end, I wanted balanced connections and I am very pleased. That limits your choice of amps, dacs, that otherwise might only be RCA, spfid, and others.
11. Find a few YouTube gurus. For e.g., John Darko, Currawong, Zeos [all things headphones], Currawong, Steve Guttenberg (The
Audiophiliac, not the actor), PS Audio, Hans Beekhuyzen (one of my fav but I have to listen to his episodes more than once on a particular topic. That said, Hans was instrumental in my choice of the DAC/streamer I bought).
12. Choose where you want to spend most of your money. The old saw was to suggest something like 60/40 on speakers / amp or vice versa. Then decide what you want to tweak as you go along. .For e.g., I studied speaker placement, room correction, cables and interconnects endlessly, racks, isolation, cabinets, "to raise speaker wire off the floor or not?" rabbit holes... I started with room treatment since I have high ceilings, hardwood floors, glass French doors, two large windows, and a trayed ceiling. That meant acoustic panels, rugs, window treatments, but all in a slow process. My big surprise was getting into headphones. I had not intended to but eventually built a headphone system with 2 different AMPS (1 linear, 1 tube), a DAC, and several open back headphones and IEMs.
13. One thing I had to remind myself when I was deep in the weeds was to STOP and have fun! Stop, sit, rest, and actively listen. A lot. As Hans ends his YouTubes, "and whatever you do, enjoy the music"!
Good luck!
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