How do I start?

I guess I disagree with the one at a time approach and I also think that life is too short to keep looking for nirvana. I would take my budget and allocate it as best as possible and bring up the whole system to its next level. That way you can enjoy what you have now and learn about the next steps as you save-up. Believe me, I sometimes drive myself crazy trying to decide should I upgrade now or wait until the next best thing is out.

Enough for generalities, the world of video is in a pretty high state of flux right now. HDTV, HD-DVD, DTS-EX and on-and-on. So I would take my budget and weight it more towards a set of speakers. In most appartments you can get away without the center channel and go with the phantom center (saves some money). And there are tons of great speakers here on Audiogon that you can pick up at a reasonable price. In order to drive the new speakers you will need a reciever and I think you should do well to stick with something from a couple of years back and remember that you will be fine with just Dolby Digital 5.1 for quite a while. If you have anything left you can think about some surrounds. Your choices here are going to depend on how you are able to mount them. Living in an appartment you most likely can't mount them to a wall so you will be stuck with either stands or maybe a bookcase. And therefore you may endup with a pair of simple direct radiating speakers. I think you will have spent your first allotment of funds by now but your next thought should be to a subwoofer.

I agree with the "make this enjoyable" sentiment so no worries.

Good luck and welcome to the 'Gon

John

Buying everything at once means the customer has to compromise on everything. Real people have to live with real budgets. Buying everything at once sounds like the approach my ten year old son would take. I would encourage a more mature approach to this obsession.

Keep it simple: a multichannel receiver and a full set of speakers. For this round at least, buy your cables and interconnects from Radio Shack. Some A-goners will pooh-pooh this suggestion, but in your price range Sound & Vision is a better source of product info than the higher-end rags. They've done some good roundups of components in the past, so find a local library that gets it and you'll get some good advice.

Hey Nrchy,

Congratulations on having such a mature and insightful son. He must know the frustration of having a single terrific component that cannot be enjoyed because of the limitations of the rest of the system. I'm not sure how your 10 year old figured out that for sah's first system he has to comprimise and that bringing his entire system to the best level that he can afford as a first step will bring him the most enjoyment now. Then when the upgrades occur sah can concentrate on the one-at-a-time approach.

Cheers,

John

Speakers first is the rule for everyone. Match them to your room and musical tastes then get an amp that will drive them, fine tune the sound with wire.