I have always enjoyed quality music, from my guitar to the sound coming out of my speakers. I recently acquired a pair of M-Audio AV 40's, which sound OK. I do have a Harmon Kardon AVR 100 receiver and a Harmon Kardon cd player I acquired from a garage sale. My tape player is a nakamichi. I currently only want to update my speakers, as I think it is the weakest link. I am wanting to stay below $400 USD at this time, so I can only update one component. Since I have a receiver that amplifies, I think I should go with passive speakers instead of these M-audios.

I really enjoyed John's article although I think he is missing a key ingredient. Would we save a lot of money knowing in advance what we would be end up being happy with? Yes, of course but I would argue that part of the enjoyment of being an audiophile is the path along with the final destination. I too started small with Arcam and entry level Thiel speakers but as I came to realize what I had been missing it was quite a lot of fun to set my sights on new components and mix and match.

Wilco-(The Album)
Great Lake Swimmers- Lost Channels
Dex Romweber - Ruins of Berlin
Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears - Tell Em What Your Name Is
John Doe & the Sadies - Country Club
Obits - I Blame You
Dan Auerbach - Keep it Hid
Naomi Shelton & the Gospel Queens - What Have You Done my Brother
Dinosaur Jr - Farm
Buddy & Julie Miller - Written in Chalk
Willem Maker - New Moon Hand
Heartless Bastards - The Mountain
Bonnie Prince Billy - Beware
Neko Case - Middle Cyclone
Vetiver - Tight Knit

In his review Michael Fremer wrote: "at some point soon the floodgates will open, and you'll be able to download hi-rez digital files of all your analog favorites."

I will be thrilled if Mr. Fremer's prediction becomes reality in the near future. I would purchase considerably more albums if all recordings (new and old) offered high resolution downloads; and a really great audio hardware delivery system for $15K or less.

SOX

very handy, and according to the white paper, much faster/efficient than the PPPS version.

set mine up earlier... everything being resampled ditheredto 32bit/192

(I posted this question earlier--did it get deleted for some reason???) How does it make sense to compare heavy-gauge Naim speaker wire to Radio Shack 16-gauge dinky-wire? Why not at least compare the Naim to zipcord of the same gauge. It's not too surprising that 16-gauge wire doesn't give you great sound...

Post deleted by Bob Stern

This is my first post on Stereophile !

I am shopping for an entirely new system. Right now my only audio source is a ipod connected to a pair on Sennheiser 555. I do enjoy music and I feel that investing a bit in a audio system would be rewarding.

I have a 2000$ budget for a DAC, an amp & speakers. The music is exclusively coming from a pc with, among other things, flac-encoded files.

I would really prefer to go for a cheap sound card with a toslink/spdif output and move the processing into either a dac or an amp with a dac.

Rega Planar 3 Hifi Audiophile Turntable - $400
"An older Planar 3 that hasn't seen a whole lot of use and is in great shape. The cartridge definitely still has some good life on it."

Is this a good deal for $400?