Audiophile newbie

Audition and learn the functions and types of different equipment options.
Try to find a good dealer who might be able to get you into used/demo gear and provide valuable asssistance.
Utilize the collective wisdom in the online audio forums.
Buy used gear to stretch your dollar but be careful.
If you want to skip to most fun and satisfying sound, seek vinyl playback with tube gear.

yep, bet an integrated nad amp on amazon or similar with at least 60 wpc. get an oppo universal disc player that will allow you to play any disc available, except hd cd for some reason, ( maybe they fixed that), and a pair of nice $500 2 way bookshelf speakers and a 400-1000$ powered sub. buy some gold banana pin connecters with quick snap features and make your own cables with some high quality monster cable from best buy cut to your length. simple inexpensive starter set will hopefully satisfy you for yrs. THERE! solid advice that i will regret having given in ten minutes. then in 5 yrs switch to tubes and buy a turntable and dac and costly cables and pre amp and mono blocks and wilson watt puppies and room treatments and line conditioners and sit there in the dark all alone and listen to bach fugues and sip bordeaux and listen for defects in a state of perpetual paranoia and angst.

Blue Jeans cables, some sort of music server so you have the option of streaming music (I wouldn't buy a cd player, and not a turntable either), look at used gear (NAD, if you have a little more $ look at McCormack amps, Conrad Johnson, Classe,).

ZU Speakers, Tekton Speakers (very efficient so these play loud with less watts; 80 watts should be plenty.

You'll get sound advice here. If you want the easy road, give us your budget, room size and decore (wood, glass, etc), type of music you're after and whats most important to you... Tone, imaging, dynamics..??

i have changed my mind.... i am gonna back the tekton lore or zu speakers mentioned above, might as well bypass the typical stuff and get straight to the really dynamic musically realstic sound. get an inexpesive t chip amp and whatever sacd/cd player you find on sale from a reputable seller. i forget the sound quality exists now that is sooooo much cheaper than only 5 yrs ago. personally i am in love with a full range driver and small amp combo. beats hell out of very very expensive gear in its sheer speed and realism.

Truemaineiac nailed it-

"Buy used gear to stretch your dollar but be careful.
If you want to skip to most fun and satisfying sound, seek vinyl playback with tube gear."

I recommend "all tube" designs, such as the ones from Audio Research and VTL, I have two sets of monoblock amplifiers from each, they both make excellent products. Used VTL stuff from the 90's is gloriously inexpensive, and so delightful, many audio research vintage (80's, 90's) stuff is as well.

Don't be afraid to buy used, BUT don't fall into the trap of letting a seller make you fix their broken stuff. Many industry people share the view that I've come to have, and that's if the gear arrived broken, it was broken when it shipped! If someone sends you junk, return it. Your job is not to fix their problem.

Pay with credit cards or paypal, look at the feedback, and consider that, sometimes, tube gear is so satisfying that people don't sell it unless it doesn't work. Plan of retubing any used tube gear you buy unless the seller specifies new or newer tubes.

I'd skip NAD stuff completely. I've had a receiver, an integrated amplifier, and an amp from them, and _all_ became unusable after the "magic smoke" leaked out of them.

If you want to get a good cheap CD player, find an Oppo on Craigslist, you can sometimes get a good one for 50$.