member system photos???

Wow, it really amazes me how much home prices and property tax varies with location in the USA. I don't think I could afford to live in CA.

A few years ago, I had a small 3BR ranch in Jersey and at that time I saw that prices and property taxes were considerably lower in AZ. So I moved the family out to the Tucson area where we bought a larger home for less money and lower property taxes.

Since then, home prices have been jumping here due to many Californians figuring out it was a better deal. Last year was a boom year and the price of our home has now just about doubled since we bought it. Timing is everything in life, as in real estate. And sometimes, if you hang in there long enough, you get lucky.

Albert, I'll give you three times what you paid for your house (four times if you leave your system)... What do you say?!?

While perfect placement of speakers and room treatments help you get more out of your perfectly assembled system, if you don't have the basic tonal balance right, the better placement, better treatment ain't gonna do a whole lot of good. I would pick good balanced sound with TV inbetween anyday than a perfect room with bad balanced sound. Exceesive brightness is the very common problem I have found in multiple well set up (by this I mean by the book set up, not necessarily sound) systems (worst than 9 out of 10), regardless of price. If equipement synergy is not there to begin with no amount of room treatment is going to help.

This is for me a new found knowledge, what with garage band across my house playing almost everyday puts everything in pespective real fast. Qualities like: Systems Sounds really good, lot of details, front to back soundstage, involving, dynamic etc is just characteristics of satisfying sound, but reality is it is far from reality:)

Tim is correct. This is ego driven hobby. That is okay as long as you know your goal: Right balanced sound. You can have your cake and eat it too. You just have to admit your high priced equipement/system's faults. Most audiophiles are fooling themselves most of the times, myself included.

Phew! I feel much better.

I forgot to mention one downside of Tucson besides the summer heat -- wages are definitely on the low side. I guess there's no place that has it all.

Nill, I don't know what to say. I don't even know what you said... But I'm glad it made you feel better. :)

Personally, I don't try to compete with other people because there will always be plenty of people that have more expensive gear and that will spend more money than I could.

My goal is simply to obtain the best gear that I can afford. If it sounds like music to me, then it doesn't matter what other folks think. But I'm finding, as many others have, that sound quality does not always coincide with the sticker price. Fun to me is finding high bang-for-the-buck gear and then trying to put together complete systems using such components.

We are have a much longer trip to the ocean than we did last year. Now, it's a 5 minute car ride (15 minutes by bike). We use to (in our last place) walk down the block. Yep, that is the ocean. Our new place required some major compromises in the way of my rig set up. I am happier than I have ever been, rig wise, but my set up is not acoustically near ideal, but sounds wonderful, never-the-less, and looks great in its' new crib. Bottom line? My wife isn't driven me nuts anymore with speakers sitting out in the living room, and all the other stuff. She's happy and it translate to more musical enjoyment for me. Life and sound are good now. 3000 sq feet or 20,000 sq feet: couldn't live in it if I couldn't get to the beach in 30 minutes. I'm an inveterate beach bum....peace, warren