1st Post Intro & Ramblings

Now I’m gonna depart from traditional thinking and I’m sure many will scoff and throw stones but..... budget.

A vast majority of homes do not have a dedicated listening room so our stereo and theater share the same space. Now I’ll try my best to explain my thought process from here. All the magic happens in the stereo image, the center is mixed in mono and surround is effects. Spend your time and money in the stereo, once you have dialed it in you can now turn your attention to the rest except you shouldn’t have to spend so wildly. To hell with timbre matching speakers. Buy a Krell, Levinson etc. for your mains and depending on the speakers I would run a receiver or use a quality amp of lesser value. You basically want to keep pace with power but I feel spending hard earned $$ on a amp for effects and a mono channel defeat the purpose of a quality built amp, there is no image in mono. Find a quality speaker that reproduces vocals well enough and then tuning will get it close enough. I can elaborate further if needed.

Thank you fuzztone. Millercarbon; those budget builds are the most gratifying 

An example of this is my present setup which is basic at the moment since I buy & sell. Denon X3500 and a Meridian 556 powering a pair of Gallo Reference 3.1 towers. My wife is slowly becoming an audiophile and we went to a friends house who spent a considerable amount of cash on a 11.2 SVS Prime speaker bundle and Yamaha receiver. On the way home, wifey started asking why I didn’t step in and fix the sound. I explained that I did what I could quickly but it is what it is. She replied our 5.2 kicks it in the ... and we spent half the money. 

A friend at work came over one day she wanted a stereo for her husband for his birthday, what can we do? So I got her requirements and room info, got everything together, brought it all over and set it up so when he came home it was a total surprise.

Next thing you know the guy is calling me up all excited. In his business he goes to a lot of homes, guys with systems are always showing them off to impress, and this sounds better than ANY of them including ones he knows cost a small fortune... so how much did the wife spend???

$2500.

"Really? I thought at least $5k for sure." He can't believe it. But its true. A little knowledge goes a long way. And yeah, it is gratifying.

That’s great. A little bit time and patience along with experience can take a system a long way. I purchased a complete Emotiva surround setup (Craigslist) with the ERT 8.3 and a 5 channel Emotiva amp. Sold within a week and made a few bucks. 6 months later I happened across the guy I sold it to, we chatted it up and of course we started equipment. I told him to dump the amp, he couldn’t understand why so I bet him $50 that my 25 year old Linn LK100 would make those ERT’s sound substantially better. I literally placed the Linn on top of the emotiva and went head to head with no tuning. His jaw dropped, 80x2 vs 400x2. Instead of taking his money, I sold him another amp.