Newbie needs advice for upgrade.

If your place is smaller, I'd consider powered studio monitors with a matching sub. It can be set-up like nearfield monitors in a recording studio. This will provide a clean balanced sound to develop your ears. I'd recommend 2-way with 8 inch bass drivers, along with a matching powered sub. This is a very common nearfield monitor driver configuration.

Powered studio monitors and matching powered subs can work in many arrangements. They have separate volume controls and high and low passes for the best balance. You'll need "pre-outs" or you may connect directly to your player source, or possibly to your headphone jacks with a convertor plugs.

For HT, you can add a pair for surrounds and one for the front channel. In a smaller place, 5 excellent quality studio monitors with matching subs could really sound nice.

Component matching is probably the most important factor in a great sound reproduction system.

Good luck...enter the audiophile world with caution... there may be no turning back...

I'll ring in too with "Don't feel embarrassed". Look at the Legendary Audio gear thread. I began by making a audiophile notebook. I listed the most highly regarded components first from different references. Component matching becomes more and more important.

When my "Best List" was missing any real personal experience matching components, my personal notebook kept my sights clearer and loose ideas better grounded while reading forums, reviews and learning technical expressions.

Keep an eye on EBay and CraigsList. With a list in hand, you can much better land those separates. Occassionally, rare pieces appear that are little known. I never heard of 25 year old custom Yamaha ST-1 cathedral monitors and had this burning feeling. I reluctantly took off on a 4 hour road trip and came home with my new front mains. I'm so happy following this happenstance, haphazardous impulse and enjoying music/HT more than ever. I'd say they weigh in at least 200 pounds each.

Look up "craigsublist" for some good info on subs rated by both music and HT reproduction. No lists are all-inclusive. Good Luck and let us know what you chose and how it sounds.

I have a pair of Mackie 824 and Beringer Truth B2031A studio monitors. The Truths are good knock-offs of the Mackies. Both are good near-field studio monitors. My AVP2 manual recommends possibly using near-field monitors as rear surrounds, placed behind the listeners, in addition to higher mounted ceiling surrounds. The Proceed manual stated adding near-fields may add to the surround channels SQ depending on the room set-up.

I also use them with Roland TD-12's and a Roland GT-10. Very versitile, especially with a matching sub.

Recording studio monitors are not large stage or musician monitors. Their purpose is different.

You've seen the smaller, sealed off studios where the recording engineers sit in front of large mixer boards? There's usually 2-3 pairs of different monitors in their "sound rooms".

At 4-8 feet or so, near-field monitors attempt to provide perfect sound reproduction in a smaller "sound room" for recording engineers. Within this smaller sound envelop, they mix tracks accurately to sound best on the vast majority of speakers in the market. They use 2-3 different types of studio monitors to help get the best possible final mix.

Escudemor,

I recommended active over passive studio monitors based on your experience and questions. Active monitors will make your component matching easier. By choosing active monitors, you won't have to match amps and speakers. Active studio monitors have specially designed internal amps and crossovers designed to perfectly match the internal drivers.

When you are ready to match components and select larger speakers, your ears will have been trained by listening to your favorite music and HT through perfectly balanced, accurate studio monitors. That's a huge benefit.
Passive studio monitors can do this just as well if the amps and speakers are matched correctly. Active moitors may be simply the easiest solution.