How true this statement is BPD24, I am humble enough to admit I am somewhat in this company - "I see a lot of Home Theatre set-ups seriously out of balance, with fairly high-performance speakers and very high-performance subs being fed by mediocre receivers (a pretty compromised component in even the best examples, with often anemic power supplies). The guiding principal of course is to have a balanced system, with all the equipment roughly equal in quality."
The reality is, many of us ARE beginners, and THINK we have great sound, until we finally listen and learn from those with true experience in what makes for a good to fabulous system, and then move on to new equipment upgrades in a search for that goal. Also, there are obviously many tastes in kinds of music, and the particular "sound" that the high fidelity hardware delivers at their price points. For example, Tube Amps, Turntables/LPs vs Digital music, exotic cables/interconnects, etc.
I would imagine many of us enjoy our Premium 5.1 HT channels and DVR everything for watching with the Spouse/Kids, and then make a play lists of our favorite MP3's in ITunes for easy playback. Or, que up a LP, or pop in a 5.1/THX/Blu Ray concert for more fidelity.
In the interest of cost, we may think if we can save some $$ in a area, then we can still get desired results. Given this, my example fits this well - build a killer pair of LS-9's and LSC to start in the making of a great system, cause why not if you can do it for ~$5K and a ton of labor. BUT - then think that a higher end Yamaha receiver with almost 200w/channel or equivalent is going to make these speakers sound great, and realizing more is better add a bunch of cheap amps that advertise well and fill up the Receiver Pre-Outs with these. Looks impressive, and sounds "good", but we don't know better.
As I said, when I finally replaced all of this old hardware fed off of (5) 20w outlets to run it all and a gazillion cables adding noise with much better hardware to be in "balance" with the LS's did I realize I had gone down the wrong path. The difference was so dramatic, I had to laugh at myself for wasting $$ on all of that stuff. I realize there are additional factors I can explore such as speaker positioning and room treatments, "The MOST overlooked component is the room; no system will sound any better than it's room will allow" - would appreciate tips used to improve here. An example here is with the LS9's and a big sub one can load up the room in a real hurry.
So, next I will hook up my Turntable to see what that sounds like, and upgrade my old cheapo Samsung Blu Ray to an OPPO or equivalent. Lastly, there is a lots to learn for some of us in pursuing HD music beyond the many MP3's we may have on our computers - like optimum settings in ITunes/Quick Time, HI Rez downloads, and the increasing availability of HD digital music.
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