Achieving the Impossible?
I thought a thread about budget home theater might be interesting. As I have surfed through various threads I find it very common to see people looking for 'budget' gear. I find this a contradiction in terms sometimes because what exactly is 'budget'. I typically assume that term to be very loose as it applies differently to everyone. Is there such a thing as quality budget material? Well, yes and probably no. It's always a great feeling when we get a sweet deal on something and come in under our initial budget on something or if we are able to cut some corners somewhere. We all want the best gear for the best price ...right?
So that begs the question...is it possible to achieve a really high-end system for a budget price? Is is possible to make a $1000 system sound like a $5000 system? Yes. If you go out and spend $5000, but don't buy the right stuff you could easily have wasted that money and/or could have acheived the same thing with less money, but a better strategy.
I wonder what method most people use when deciding anyway. I, for one, do not really think ahead in terms of budget, but rather I progress over time making upgrades when financially possible. I don't set aside X amount of money and then figure out how to spend it.
Maybe we could use this thread as a place to design 'starter' systems that would deliver great results for under $2000 for everything. By everything I mean DVD/CD player, Receiver/Amp, cables, speakers etc. This is for home theater use...so we want to keep it to 5.1 channels.