Quote Originally Posted by blackraven
The best advice I can give you is to keep it simple (forget about biamping for now) and go and listen to equipment at high end audio stores with the type of music you listen to most. Make sure its well recorded. You may have trouble with metal and death metal as it is poorly recorded for the most part. Mcintosh is good equipment and has that eye candy appeal but there are a lot of better brands out there. I like Audio Research, Ayre and Conrad Johnson. I just wish I could afford those brands. I would strongly suggest you consider an SACD player if you listen to a lot of Classical music. Give a listen to the PSB Synchrony One's as it they should do well with your varied taste in music. Dynaudio would be a good fit for your tastes as well. Take a look at these Salk speakers. They sound great with tremendous bass, clarity and detail- http://www.salksound.com/speakers_veracity_ht3.shtml -They are some of the best speakers I have heard. Here are some reviews on them- http://www.audioreview.com/cat/speak...7_1594crx.aspx The Magnepans will give you that live sound but really are not the best for hard rock. They excel at Classical, acoustic, jazz and vocal type music. They are a very revealing speaker and will really expose poorly recorded music.

With a budget of $14K, I would spend about $4-6K on speakers, $3k on an SACDP/CDP and the the rest on an amp and preamp.
i will def check out the SACD. as for price, i am not gonna look at the price tag when i try the speakers just so i won't think the more it cost, the better it is. i just want the right sound for me. but i will def check the brands you suggested if my local stores have them. and i agree with you. most death metal and metal recording is crap. i really listen to a lot of pop and pop rock most of the time. classical is not something i always listen to, but i still do.

i guess i will buy a 2nd pair of speakers some day. it is the same for guitar as well. different amps work for different types of music.

thanks for the advice.