Hi everyone!

I'm a lifelong music fan, 32 years old, and looking to finally get a "proper" stereo. I currently have cheap bookshelf stereos in a couple of bedrooms in my house, and in the living room, I have a surround sound dvd player/receiver all in one that I got from a big box store. This is my main source for listening to music. The music sounds okay to me, but I keep reading online that I'm missing so much more from my music, and to fully appreciate music, you should have a proper 2 channel stereo. My questions are this:

I'm thinking about adding a sub strictly for my two channel listening. These two have peeked my interest. Any thoughts or experience with either of these two? Feel free to chime in & offer your opinions on what subs you would recommend. It's key for me to keep the heighth of the sub under 19"

I recently read in Stereophile of someone cleaning the non-read side of a cd (and with a way overpriced cleaner I might add) and would like to know what purpose that serves? Is there a measurable difference or is there science behind it? Don't tell me it sounds better. It's supposed to sound better because that's what the manufacturer wants you to believe.

I don't have the 2/08 issue right here, but in the Letters column, someone (JA?) commented that perhaps blind tests don't have "sufficient resolving power" to pick up differences that ears can hear. The easiest way to increase the statistical power of a blind test is to increase the number of blind raters. Given reasonable listening conditions (e.g., familiar source material, components other than what's being tested that are familiar to the raters, sufficient listening time), the more listeners you have, the more chance that a difference noticed by the raters is not the result of chance.

I've been trying EVERYWHERE in Manhattan, to purchase the speaker issue. No success. (I tried book stores & newsstands in UWS, Midtown, Union Square, etc.) Maybe I'll have better luck today...

Hi there,

I need to purchase some headphones, my budget is around

My friend gave me an amp that is about ten years old. It's an old RBH one that looks similar to the ones built into new RBH subs, but this is seperate. Any ways, ive been listening to it for a while and it's worked perfectly, but today when i went to listen this morning, it wouldn't work. I used an ohmmeter to check the fuse, its fine, the front speakers are working, but no power is being delivered to the sub. And i checked all of the cables and they are fine.