Streetdaddy -
If you want to do something really fun in January, ask your local dealer to get you a pass to the CES in Las Vegas, January 8-11. Then go hear for yourself all this cool high-end stuff. Last year was my first year, and my first love is loudspeakers (for 20 years I built them as a hobby), so I made a point of listening to all the highly regarded systems. What I found was that, to my amazement, brands I'd hardly ever heard of, or in some cases never heard of, sounded better than the big names. The same thing with amplifiers. Sadly most people are stuck with "the list" as a starting point, because many of the very finest pieces of audio gear - many of the truly world-class values - will never show up on "the list".
If you want to do something really fun in January, ask your local dealer to get you a pass to the CES in Las Vegas, January 8-11. Then go hear for yourself all this cool high-end stuff. Last year was my first year, and my first love is loudspeakers (for 20 years I built them as a hobby), so I made a point of listening to all the highly regarded systems. What I found was that, to my amazement, brands I'd hardly ever heard of, or in some cases never heard of, sounded better than the big names. The same thing with amplifiers. Sadly most people are stuck with "the list" as a starting point, because many of the very finest pieces of audio gear - many of the truly world-class values - will never show up on "the list".