An Emotiva BasX A-100 and a pair of Q Acoustics Q3020s started it all! Five years later, I’ve gifted my parents this humble system and now own a set of active 3-way speaker monitors with DSP the size of a mini fridge, an all-in-one DAC/preamp/headphone amp, a turntable, a CD player, and some modded headphones.

Despite countless upgrades, I still vividly remember the joy of my first stereo system. In fact, during my journey, I’ve grown skeptical of many audiophile claims and learned one important thing: music enjoyment doesn’t fundamentally improve with more expensive gears!