Given my recent experimentation with some affordable gear, I felt it was time to start a thread where we can all share our ideas, of how someone new to this hobby could get into the game (without taking out a mortgage for his first purchase).

These are my suggestions for great ways to start the audiophile journey:

Step One (Budget up to $100) - Upgrade the headphones on your iPod/cellphone/computer. You'd be amazed how effective this can be at increasing sound quality, while requiring very little outlay of cash. I've heard a lot of good things about the $50 iGrado's....

Step Two (Budget $100 - $1000) - Assuming, you don't decide to stick with Headphones and leave speakers to some other sucker, then toss the nasty little dell speakers that came with your desktop and purchase a nice pair of Active Nearfield Monitors. M-Audio and Audio Engine come to mind. You can also consider, getting a cheap DAC, like a Musical Fidelity V-DAC to combine with the speakers for optimum performance or get an active with built in DAC (a popular option in the Pro Audio Scene).

Step Three (Budget Greater than $1K) - Even though Active Speakers would still give you arguably better value for money, you may want to consider flexibility and upgradability. So I'd suggest breaking free of your desktop with Passive Monitors, an Integrated Amp and a Squeezebox, AppleTV, WDTV, PS3 etc...

So if you were starting out, what kind of components would you select?