Nat, where are you located?? Are there any HiFi salon's located with driving distance? You may just want to go just for the sake of wrapping your own 2 ears around some of the lowest priced gear out there and see for yourself if any magic can be found - or if any of the problems you've been running into can be avoided. It can't hurt anything, even if you only wind up ruling some things out for yourself. Let your ears be the guide. Also, dealers often have already experimented with their stock and have come up with pairings (like amp/speakers) that sound the best among what they have to choose from. Ask them if they have any particularly good sounding, but cheaper combo's and then don't fail to at least audition them. Then keep both hands on your wallet...(!) Apart from that, Emotiva does offer some pretty good bang for the buck gear. Also study up as much as you can about impedance matching from your source-to-pre (or int. amp/receiver, or whatever) as well as from amp-to-speaker. Getting things wrong here may be part of the problem you've been having (can't say that for sure), but this can only help you in the long run. Hope this helps.
beginner budget set up
I'm looking put together a set up, my funds are limited. Most of my music on my pc. I'm thinking of airmotiv4 and emotiva XDA-1.
This is probably the wrong way to go about this but years ago i put together a set up consisting of a marantz av receiver and mission bookshelf. All from info I gathered from the internet. It sounds horrible.
This is probably the wrong way to go about this but years ago i put together a set up consisting of a marantz av receiver and mission bookshelf. All from info I gathered from the internet. It sounds horrible.