Aside from a few notable exceptions, it seems that the price of a speaker within a system rises geometrically as the speaker approaches full range. For example, you can get really detailed, musical monitors and bookshelf speakers for a relatively affordable price (a few thousand). However, as the bass driver is added, the price shoots up within the same line of speakers. As the bass driver gets bigger and the speaker approaches the 20hz in its bottom octave, the price doubles with each model as it gets you closer to that bottom octave.

I have a NAD T-532 DVD/CD player($500), and the specs are listed as: 24 bit/96 kHz Crystal DAC & Burr Brown Op-amps.

How much improvement would I get if I bought a dedicated CD player($1000-1300), with 24 bit/192 kHz; with or without 8x upsampling?

This would be the last piece of my system to upgrade, I'm just trying to decide if it would be worth the expense.

I have a Sunfire True Subwoofer MKIV

www.sunfire.com/pdf/True%20Subwoofer%20MKIV%20Manual.pdf

and a McIntosh amp MA6850

www.berners.ch/McIntosh/Downloads/MA6850_own.pdf

I cannot figuure out how the subwoofer connects to the amp.

TheEntryLevel-ML-21799-ML-

As someone who is relatively new to upscale hi-fi and loving my new system, I have to ask when is the amount of $$ invested payback with less returns.

I just received my latest copy of Stereophile and went to the web and looked at some speakers that were over $20K (Martin Logan's), a CD player $17K and an integrated amplifier for $30K. I guess if you have the money more power to you but is it worth investing that much money for hi-fi, I mean does it make you music sound THAT much better?