BUDGET
The first decision when buying a stereo system is how
much money to spend.
If you have unlimited budget, all you have to do is testing
HI END components we discuss later how.
The problem is with a limited budget (a problem to most of us).
We said that a stereo system is built of sources, amplification
and speakers.
It's wise to spend most of the money of a limited
budget on source and
amplification.
What is a limited budget ? If we are talking about prices
in the USA for
an example, a cheap stereo system costs several hundreds
$, an expensive
one costs several thousands of $ for each component,
you can buy a system
with a price tag of 30,000$ or more.
I guess these prices put almost everyone of us under
the tag of "limited
budget buyers"...
The most common sources are c.d player, tuner, tape recorder
and turntable.
It's a very good idea to buy first only one source. If
you decided to spend
one third of a budget on sources, one third on an amplifier
and the last on speakers,
the best is to buy only one source at first (let's say
a good c.d. player) and
after a time, when budget enables to add a good tuner
or tape.
Let's assume we have a budget of 1,000 something. It's
clear, that a system
consist of a 400 something c.d player, 400 something
amplifier and 200 something speakers, will be much better then a system
at the same price that include c.d player, tape recorder (maybe a double
tape recorder), tuner, amplifier and speakers.
I wish to be clear that more money doesn't mean
better quality, but from my
experience, better quality always needs more money -
and I hope it's obvious.
there are no shortcuts in stereo systems, and for every
high quality system
you can find a better one that costs more. The
unpleasant thing is to find
that with the same budget you had spent, you could buy
a better quality
system.
For this reason it's a must to buy a stereo system with
great care, and to test
carefully several systems and combinations before buying.
Where to buy and how
to test - we will discuss later, but keep in
mind that a mistake in buying can cause one of two things
-
1 - You'll become a random listener.
2 - You'll spend much more money to replace the fault
component with a
better one.
In short, in order to get maximum quality for a given budget -