Quote Originally Posted by GMichael
OK, your turn. Spill it.
After I got married and moved into my first little apartment, I wanted some music. I went to a Sears type store in the bay area called Wards. My intentions were to buy a all in one unit(CD,Tape,Tuner). I get into the electronics section and didn't know where to start so I asked for help. You see, my world had pretty much consisted of a couple of boomboxes. Anyways, the salesman starts a little speech about buying separate components vs all in one units and gets into surround sound. First apartment = small budget. I left Wards with a open box Panny HTIB (Pro Logic) for $300. I hooked it up to my VCR and WOW. I thought it sounded so good. This was about 8 years ago.

About a year after I got my Panny setup, my wife and I took a little trip to her dad's in AZ. Well I thought I had a nice little setup until he showed me his Pioneer Elite system. We watched Matrix and Saving Private Ryan. My little Panny setup was not a HT. He showed me what a DVD player was and talked about how to set everything up. As soon as we got back to Cali.....ZOOM.....straight to Circuit City. I picked up a JVC AVR and DVD player, Kenwood tape and CD player and a Yamaha speaker setup with a powered sub. My first DVD was The Matrix. I bumped my TV from a 27" to a 36".

I was happy for a while but the little voices started talking to me. I started spending more time at CC and BB and wanted some tower speakers. I replaced my 3 front Yamaha's with Sony towers and a Sony center. And about 2 years after that I upgraded to another JVC AVR and upgraded all my speakers to Sony. I know, bad moves, but I had no clue. After about two years of that setup, I still felt something was missing. I had a buddy who got into HT and he was in love with Energy speakers. He also explained what I should look for in AVR's and quality brands to go with.

About a year ago I started upgrading again little by little. This time around I had a good idea about what to look for. I started with my AVR. I researched and narrowed it down to Denon, Onkyo and HK. Well we know how that ended. I noticed a difference in sound but nothing like night and day. Next I went through a bunch of DVD players. I wanted a player with SACD playback and at the time only Marantz, Samsung and Denon offered it. (Well as far as I knew). We know how that ended. Lastly about 5 months ago I made the best upgrade of all, my speakers. This time I knew to check my options at stores such as Good Guys and Magnolia. I auditioned Boston Acoustics, Klispch and Energy. I had heard Energy at my friend house and liked em, plus the C-series was being replaced by the RC line, so I got my C-series setup at 50% off. A Energy sub got worked into the deal and there you go.

After finding this site and learning soo much, I was able to calibrate my system correctly. The new speakers are still amazing to me. The biggest difference by far came from upgrading to some quality speakers. I've gone through most of my CD collection and DVD collection. It's so crazy, hearing all this stuff I never heard before. I threw a 57" TV in there and I'm one happy camper. So that's my story.