If you started over what would you do differently?

I would have taken better care of my records and I definitely would have gone and seen Muddy Waters & Howlin' Wolf in person. (And not one of those "Father & Sons" things, but the real deal at some club on the west side of Chicago). I never saw Freddy King either.

I have been interested in audio for the last 36 years and have always had multiple systems. I have been actively swapping out equipment in the name of upgrading only for the last 7 years. So what did I forget 7 years ago ... very simple, upgrading is vertical, not horizontal. A few top pieces trumps several middle level pieces any day. Wasted a few grand screwing around with a number of small popular monitors not worth snot, when one really good pair would have done the trick.

Regards, Rich

I would've found Audiogon sooner rather than starting out buying new equipment. Used is the only way to go, better selection, better prices, and lots of cool, fun people. At least I found it eventually!

I would go all PC based (Mac actually). That is still my current plan...another project for when I get the urge/time. Upload all the CD's to a lossless RAID server system and junk my mega changers and go with a high quality low jitter DAC or DSP system (master clock on the DAC preferably)- simpler and will no doubt sound slightly better. I'll keep a tray player only for DVD and HD discs. My problem until now has been that I like music too much!! Gear is only secondary to the music. Fiddling with jewel cases and feeding a CD tray like an assembly line worker on a player that takes a minute to change a disc is just not an enjoyable thing for me - I simply jump around too much in genres etc.

I agree completely with Jond.
Audiogon has saved me a ton of money.
(Luckily, I only bought a couple pieces of equipment before I found out about Audiogon, and those were bought either off Ebay or were consignment pieces at a dealer.)

Other than that, I am not sure if I really made any big mistakes in building my system.