Point me in the right direction

Pabelson gives some good advice. First, you/we need to know the intended purpose of the system. Are you going to listen to music only, or is it going to be a Home Theater system? What formats does it need to play, ie CD, DVD, radio, TV, LP, etc.?

We also need to know your budget. Decide your budget and stick to it. If you have some components from an old system that you may want to use, list them here so people can help you determine if they are useful in the new system.

You have a huge choice concerning the number of speakers you plan to use. Personally, if you have a limited budget, I would suggest that you forget about trying to set up a multi-channel HT system. It is much easier to set up a good sounding inexpensive 2-channel system vs. a 5.1 (or more) channel system.

Provide a few more details and you will likely get some valuable advice.

Enjoy,

TIC

have to do your DD, due diligence. You have lots of homework to to do reading over hundreds of topics here.

For the responces I'm thankful. I only have an Onkyo TX 902 tuning amp that I may consider using if possible. My emphasis is mainly listening to music(although my wife and daughter rents/buys on the minimum 15 DVD's monthly so I may have to consider more). $500 seems to be a more realistic budget right now. I know DVD players are capable of playing CD's but the aforementioned Onkyo is not A/V so I may be limited there. I will do more research here and maybe other sites others mentioned here. Thanks all will be listening for more advice.

I should have included this in my last post but didn't think of it at the time of writing. I would guess speakers are the most important piece to focus on chewing up most of the $500 budget. If I'm correct with that assumption I would guess that would limit my choices in a CD or DVD player.

Bigken,

If the Onkyo is still working, there is no reason why you can't still use it. You can simply buy a DVD player and connect it via L&R RCA analog outputs to any of the available inputs on the Onkyo (like CD). You would need to go into the menu of the DVD player and set it up for "stereo" or "PCM" output. This will force the DVD to output all sound through the L&R stereo outputs of the DVD player. So, for CDs it would play as a normal CD player. For DVDs, it would down-mix the 5.1 channel outputs to a 2-channel output.

So, if you plan to use the Onkyo, you would only need to buy a DVD/CD player and 2 speakers for now.

If you plan to stick to your $500 budget, I would suggest looking for a pair of floorstanding speakers in the $400 range and then buying a $100 (or less) DVD player. I've read plenty of reviews from folks that were very happy with the audio from a sub-$100 DVD player. I'm not one of those folks, but I'm the obsessive type!

For floorstanders, I know you can get the Athena 2.2 for $400 from www.audioadvisor.com and they come with a 30 day return policy. I would also suggest asking for $400 speaker recommendations in a new post. List the equipment you plan to use, i.e. Onkyo TX-902 and an inexpensive DVD player. You might get some great suggestions.....

Enjoy,

TIC