My Apartment Sized Setup

[T_M]

Just wanted to share my recently completed setup.
I have an apartment with a medium sized living room space (5m x 7m), with concrete walls/granite floor.
The sound is great for my range of music which is metal, drum & bass, and techno (i.e. lots of bass).
Took about 1 week for the sub to really shine and my ears to adjust to the sound having gone from a hifi all-in-one Sony system

Marantz CD-6003
Marantz PM-6003
http://www.aventhusiast.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/PM6003-CD6003_medium.jpg

Bower & Wilkins (B&W) 685
http://www.hifix.co.uk/graphics/pics/large/20143.jpg

Bower & Wilkins (B&W) ASW610
http://www.audiot.co.uk/imagegen.ashx?image=/images/product/main/Black-without-grill2.jpg&height=388&width=405&constrain=true&compression=100&pad=true

[shoota]

i like it. very nice pics too

[Serra]

That's pretty sweet. No-one ever buys the high-end players, it's always just the receiver/amp. There's less argument for it these days than there used to be, but it's still the coup de grace.

As an aside, I really love Marantz as a brand. I've never owned anything of theirs and don't see anything that is empirically special about them versus any other quality name, but there's just a special something about the name. It's like how no matter good an Android phone is, it's not an iPhone... except unlike Apple, there's no resentment from anyone towards Marantz to tarnish it at all. On the other end of the spectrum is someone like Onkyo - there's nothing wrong with the brand technically, their prices are good, but it's still quite a "blah" brand (and I say this as someone who is starting to look at dropping a good chunk of change on a new Onkyo receiver).

Maybe it's exclusivity? Marantz is one of those brands that you have to be 'in the know' to buy because it's not everywhere and you get to look like you really thought your purchase through and went fully custom, while on the other hand you can buy Onkyo at any retail shop in the US.

[Nanometer]

A lot of it is owning a brand. And I am the kind of person that likes to keep everything symmetrical. One is for a performance aspect but also for the aesthetics part of it. As for as bang for buck goes, onkyo goes a long way. If you have the money to get another high end brand then that's your choice. It does without question get to a point where you pay more for brand than for performance. For most home theater and music listeners, a 600 receiver is far good enough. Though plenty of audiophiles disagree and claim that a 5000 dollar 5 channel amp is a must. Oh please.. I can get a great steak from any state in this country, open up your eyes and it doesn't have to cost Ruth Chris or Morton's kind of money, though I'd never deny a meal from there.