Just curious what you all have set up.
I've found that this is the "Grassroots" hobby of all hobbies.
I love buying used high end equipment for pennies on the dollar, cleaning it up, and enjoying for awhile, then selling and trying something else. 
Don't mind me today.... i'm bored and it's Friday.
i am mildly...
I've gotten killer deals on speakers.
my secret? look for stores closing in the local shopping mall. I got 6 Bose surround sound speakers for a grand total of $100 (also included a cheap 5 disk cd changer and receiver)
I bought 2 broken 50" projection tv's on CL. one had a bad screen, the other bad internals. compbined them and tossed the leftovers my cost total? $160
I have a Crimson power amp I paid $30 for, that blows away anything I've ever heard, sub $1500.
$25 DVD player for the cd's, and a small pair of bass reflex bookshelfs (built from scrap, painted with spray on bedliner), using CSS WR125 drivers, and a 20yr old set of Vifa D19 tweeters.
Thats my shop system, and I have about $150 in it.
The house system is a liittle more high end. I think I have about $500 in that one 
Marchand power amp, Nad preamp, Yamaha CD player, and a pr of homebuilt all Peerless MTM's.
I had a nice set of Martin Logan Odesseys, and will be picking up a pair of the prodigies near the end of the year. I used to run them off rogue audio amps.
At the moment i'm running an Adcom GTP-400 preamp ($100), Onkyo M5150 poweramp ($75 ridiculous amounts of power. Modded to bench 347wpc @ 4ohms), Pioneer Elite DV-50A ($50, discontinued floor model locally), Paradigm Esprit V.3s ($150 off a forum), Klipsch RW-10D ($250 locally from a guy that works at Klipsch, brand new), and some good cables and interconnects. OH! And a Sansui TU-5500 tuner in perfect condition. (1978 vintage, $15 a flea market.)
The HT set is more Grassroots, but i'm not as proud of it. Just a 7.1 Onkyo reciever with a few pairs of decent speakers w/ dual Mirage Omni S8 subwoofers.
It's just as amazing the stuff you can find on Craigslist in terms of audio as what we find in cars. It's nifty.
I'll try to get pics up of my setup.
lets see if this works, this was back when I was building the house.
The chainsaw between them just makes it right.
Somewhat - and quite GR too. I have a pair of B&W DM110 speakers I bought brand new 23 years ago, an Arcam Alpha 6 amp off ebay this past year and a Denon CD player also off ebay.
I never see anything decent on Craigslist round here - must have better luck in other parts of the country.
What's the Miata of bookshelf speakers? (Cheap, easy to find, good performance, etc.) That's going to be my next purchase.
I'm thinking of building a tube amp soon, too.
I'm a gear nerd, and I've been resisting getting into home audio, only because I trend very geeky about sound and such.
alex wrote:What's the Miata of bookshelf speakers? (Cheap, easy to find, good performance, etc.) That's going to be my next purchase.
Paradigm Atom
Gotta get some Peaveys! Black Widows for the win!
wearymicrobe wrote:lets see if this works, this was back when I was building the house.
Is that a Rotel receiver down there? Looks like one.
A Miata of speakers? I'd probably vote for one of the slightly older Klipsch models, since they're mainstream enough to be not too high end but are still very good quality. And boy do some of those sound excellent. We have a customer who has a nice set o' dems, and I, uhh, make sure that stuff is tested everytime I go there! I tried to get the model number off 'em, but they were set back a bit and kinda tough to get to. From what I've seen, not all the expensive stuff is that great.
Back in school we had a suh-weeet set of Genelec studio monitors that, to this day, take the cake as far as what I've heard. You'd just hear all kinds of stuff that you didn't know was there before! It was like you were able to see the sound with your ears...it was crazy.
suprf1y wrote:alex wrote:What's the Miata of bookshelf speakers? (Cheap, easy to find, good performance, etc.) That's going to be my next purchase.
Paradigm Atom
Paradigm Atom, Paradigm Titan, Polk Monitor 5JR/5JR+,
Any older Polk that's the size you're looking for will do nice. Monitor 5, VS-25, Monitor 7 (slightly over bookshelf size, but no floorstander).
Monitor 40s can be had for cheap brand new, and they're a decent speaker.
Here's an older pic of my system:
I think you have missed the point of "surround sound" 
I used to be, had a set of Cerwin Vega D9s driven off a 700w amp. A DBX 18" sub driven off a 200w amp. Onko receiver, Pioneer CD changer. Used to piss off the neighbors on a regular basis 20 years ago. Then a lightning strike took out everything except the sub. It was a sad sad day.
It was all replaced with Optimus stuff when Radio Shack was clearing it out for the RCA brand. Got the surround receiver , 100 disk CD and a pile of the large die cast speakers for about $300. Still have the 18" sub hooked up mostly for movies. Doesn't have the depth of the old system though. It does get the job done though.
EastCoastMojo wrote:I think you have missed the point of "surround sound"
Haha, that's just a two channel setup. Well... two standalone 2 channel setups on the same rack. One is attached to two Sony 300cd changers for chilling out/ambient music, the other is the more serious setup attached to the Pioneer Elite player when i really just want to sit and listen. I had more room at my last place i lived in, and had to make some sacrifices. I have those two setups, and another standalone 2.1 system hooked to the gaming consoles/tv. So.... i have 3 sets in my bedroom. It's rather disgusting.
93celicaGT2 wrote: It's rather disgusting.
Eewww. Three sets? Cool.
I should charge my camera and get some pics of the setup I have in my house right now.
Peavey 115 Internationals bi-amped with Peavey CS-800 amplifiers. (1 amp for highs and 1 amp for midrange) Some really cute lil Peaveys with 12" drivers and small horns for rear surround powered by an old Carver amp Soundtech 18" subs in slot ported cabinets with Crown XLS-5000 amplifiers (1 per sub) Old ass Carver crossover that still does the job. Peavey mixer/preamp Technics Dolby Digital decoder hooked into an older Panasonic DVD player Old old old (older than me) Pioneer tuner
EastCoastMojo wrote:93celicaGT2 wrote: It's rather disgusting.Eewww. Three sets?
Yeah, i really need to consolidate, i would love to step up to all Emotiva components, but i'd have a hard time being able to get rid of everything and start over. For the money i've spent, i love all the setups, but upgrading would lose the bang for the buck aspect. But it would be a lot easier to live with.
I buy used high-end stuff as well. I've often thought my home theater hobby is at least as grassroots as my racing addiction. I have a Rotel reciever, Harman Kardon DVD player, Soundstream amp for my subs, Celestion studio monitors (simply stunning sound) for front and rear and a crappy advent center. I got an incredible deal at a police auction once a few years back. There was a big box full of police radio equipment that was all ratted out. Well, at the bottom of the box there was a bag with LOADS of high end interconnects! I snapped up the box for $20. I used the best interconnects for my system and ebay'd the rest for $300!!! I was stoked!
I just found a standalone DAC that has the same chip as the REALLY high end $1000+ dacs, for $299 brand new. I will be getting one to help remedy the sucky analog outs that my cdp has.
So psyched.
This hobby really has direct correlations to the automotive side. Lots of cheap tweaks you can do to xovers and such. I love it.
