Threads probably don't get any more subjective than this, but why not indulge?
I recall back in the 70's when I was just a "still wet behind the ears" teen, an upper crust family's son wielded an all B&O Audio system. Stunning visually, and at the time also acoustically. Everyman's dream of audio... The image and sound of that system has stayed with me all these years.
Two things have vastly influenced the enjoyment of my home system:
The Room seemed to be the big factor in my system. Building a noise diminishing environment, coupled with room tuning transformed the performance of my economical system. I built the room as a listening room which can also serve as a HT. It seems that wherever I go and listen to equipment even multiples higher priced, when I return to my sound room, my rig sounds better. I guess that makes the price of the room worthwhile (since I have less desire for upgrades in equipment)!
The other factor was trying "stacked" speakers. It was a calculated gamble (what an oxymoron, eh?) in that I had no clue how well/poorly it would perform and it was a sizeable expenditure, but promised to have a huge acoustic payoff. Simply put, running stacked, biamped speakers has catapulted the sound from just entertaining to scintillating.
I recall back in the 70's when I was just a "still wet behind the ears" teen, an upper crust family's son wielded an all B&O Audio system. Stunning visually, and at the time also acoustically. Everyman's dream of audio... The image and sound of that system has stayed with me all these years.
Two things have vastly influenced the enjoyment of my home system:
The Room seemed to be the big factor in my system. Building a noise diminishing environment, coupled with room tuning transformed the performance of my economical system. I built the room as a listening room which can also serve as a HT. It seems that wherever I go and listen to equipment even multiples higher priced, when I return to my sound room, my rig sounds better. I guess that makes the price of the room worthwhile (since I have less desire for upgrades in equipment)!
The other factor was trying "stacked" speakers. It was a calculated gamble (what an oxymoron, eh?) in that I had no clue how well/poorly it would perform and it was a sizeable expenditure, but promised to have a huge acoustic payoff. Simply put, running stacked, biamped speakers has catapulted the sound from just entertaining to scintillating.