There are 1000 Ways to Skin a Yak, or 1000 paths to audio nirvana if you prefer.

This is one of the ways.

My journey started years ago: when i was in college, i had the fortune to listen to one of my friends' system consisting of an Onkyo M-504, matching Onkyo P-304 preamp and gigantic Polk speakers, all items purchased in Japan when he was in the Navy.

I've never heard a better system before. The power and clarity of the amp and the speakers was astounding!

He could make the whole house shake with his system, without any audible distortion. It was a truly an amazing first experience!

Years later, i decided to improve my meager used Marantz Integrated amp/preamp with matching tuner, matching CD changer and Fischer box speakers, and decided to do some investigating into real hi-fi.

I started to study the Holy Audio Texts: Audio forums.

Here is what's happened so far:

1: THE BOOK OF THE SPEAKERS

I Did a lot of reading about speakers, namely planar speakers; soon i found someone in Audiogon selling a pair of 2.7QR Magnepan speakers for a very reasonable price.

I went to audition them, liked what i heard and purchased them a few days later. I actually transported the speakers in their box for over 50 miles in my two-seater Mercedes, after removing the passenger seat to make the speakers box fit!

Unloading and dragging the 100+ lbs box from my car into my apartment all by myself was no fun, but worth the effort in the end.

Since i didn't have a decent system at the time, i decided to connect the speakers to my old Marantz system just try them out.. but, i liked the sound of the Maggies so much, that the speakers stayed connected ever since.

I've never heard such huge sound and detail coming out of any box speakers i've ever heard before..then i knew, i would never own another pair of box speakers again!

I've heard good things about the 3.6 Ribbon Maggies, and i hope someday to try out a pair.

2: THE BOOK OF THE PREAMP

Next i embarked in my quest for the most pure and perfect preamp: A passive preamp, and soon I discovered transformer based preamps without any impedance-changing resistors in their signal path.

Since the high prices for a decent passive transformer-based preamp were prohibitive, I decided to build my own using two S&B TX-102 mk ii copper transformers and two attenuators purchased from John Bent @ Bentaudio.com

Wiring the transformers to the attenuators was more than i bargained for (soldering 106 wires to one volume connector is NOT FUN!) ,but John Bent kindly corrected my wiring mistakes and helped me complete the audio part of my preamp!

The enclosure of the preamp was made from a used Radio Shack decoder box purchased on Ebay (!) after much sanding, priming and filling.

Many people have suggested i should try other pre-amps, but my DIY preamp is an integral part of my system, because i know that the sound coming through it, is pure, as close to the original sound of the source as possible, untouched by any electronic circuitry or power supply. No active preamp can possibly match that.

3: THE BOOK OF THE AMPLIFIERS

After doing some serious research on amplifiers and giving up the idea of building my own after failing a few times to build a Gainclone amp, i was fortunate enough to find in Audiogon some affordable, used Class A amps to try:

A-The Monarchy Audio SE-100 Single Ended monoblocks. I had no idea then what i had stumbled upon!

I haven't heard sweeter amps so far!

Unfortunately the SE-100s i purchased at the time had a really bad hum, were quite old and weren't powerful enough to drive my Maggies, partly because at the time, i had a sound robbing Perpetual Tech P3A DAC that susbtracted 6db from the audio signal, cancelling the 6db gain of my passive preamp, so the SE-100s had a hard time driving the Maggies properly.

To correct this, I decided to purchase a more powerful Class A amp on Ebay:

B-Threshold T400.

The T400 was far more powerful and clean sounding than the Monarchy Audio SE-100s, but it didn't have the warmth the little monoblocks are known for.

Then the search for the warmest sounding Solid State Class A amp began: An amp that had the warm midrange of the Monarchy Audio SE-100s monoblocks and the clean lower and upper end of the Threshold T400.. my search led me to experiment with other various solid state amps:

C-Plinius SA-100 mk. iii., which is universally known among audiophiles for its warm sound and power.

D-Clayton S-40 Stereo Amp.. the best sounding Solid State Amp i have owned.. until i found:

E-Clayton M-70 Monoblocks.. the logical progression from the S-40.. it took me over a year to find these pair of used Monoblocks in Audiogon.. and i wouldn't dream of replacing them.. unless i can find a pair of cheap Clayton M-100s.

4:THE BOOK OF THE DIGITAL MUSIC SOURCE

After having a Marantz CD changer for many years and being used to the confort of not having to swap CDs every hour or so when listening to music, i decided to find a newer, higher-end changer that could play CDs, DVDs and DVD-Audio discs.

The unit also needed to have optical outputs to pair with a newly purchased Channel Island VDA-1 DAC, the only DAC i could afford at the time.

Without much effort I found a cheap Panasonic DVD-F85 changer unit, but i found its overall build quality to be lacking, so after experimenting with various units, such as the Kenwood DV-5700, the Yamaha S2500, and doing a lot of reading, i found the best reasonable Universal CD - DVD - DVD-A - SACD money can buy: the Denon 3910, which is truly an outstanding unit.

5:THE BOOK OF THE ANALOG TO DIGITAL PATH

I have gone through quite a few Digital to Analog Converters, units such as the Channel Islands VDA-1, Musical Fidelity A34, Perpetual Tech P-1A + P3A + Power supply, until i found a Canadian dealer selling the last new stock of the limited edition Musical Fidelity Tri Vista 21 units as used, right here in Audiogon..

In terms of sound, it doesn't get any better than The TriVista 21 DAC... my only complaints are that i wished the unit had more coaxial inputs and an input switch in the front to select between toslink and coaxial.. because if you have more than one digital input going into the unit, only the first active signal coming in will be selected.. unless you turn off the other signal or unplug its cable.

6:THE BOOK OF THE FUTURE

Let's face it.. CDs are outdated, and dead as far as i can tell.. the future of hi-fi music adquisition will be through a digital delivery of high resolution, lossless FLAC (or other lossless compressed format) files online.. (as Chesky records is already doing)

A 3.5" x 1" One TeraByte hardrive can hold half my CD collection, and allow me to search it, sort it and play it any way i wish from a nice customizeable computer interface!

This is why i spent over 6 months and built two custom iterations of my current Windows XP PVR /hardrive playback system which allows me to:

A- Play lossless audio through the Tri-Vista DAC from the hardrive or from a data DVD-R,

B- Stream MP3 audio wirelessly from another computer which has my MP3 collection on it.

C- Stream my favorite Internet radio stations.

C- Schedule, Record, watch and burn to plain vanilla video DVDs my favorite TV shows, soccer games without any restrictions (such as the ones imposed by Microsoft's horrid Windows MCE)

D- Remotely control the PVR via a wireless connection, from my bedroom to change the music that is playing in the living room.

E- Surf the net from my living room if i so desire!

7:THE BOOK OF LESSONS LEARNED

-Enjoy YOUR SYSTEM!

Sit down and enjoy the pure (hopefully Class A) audio coming out of your speakers and revel in the sounds of great instruments and singers..The sound of Dawn Upshaw's voice singing Gorecki's Third Symphony, Uakti's exotic handmade instruments performing Philip Glass's music, wonder to the choirs in Philip Glass's Itaipu symphony, feel the vibration of Miles' trumpet, or the amazing sounds of Boards of Canada or Jean Michel Jarre's electronic music.

Remember, it is all about the MUSIC, not the equipment!

These are some of the things i have found during my years of audiophile experimentation, through double blind testing:

-A un-remastered SACD is sonically indistinguishable from its CD counterpart. Example: Abraxas SACD vs. Abraxas CD remaster

-A not-remastered DVD-Audio is sonically indistinguishable from its CD counterpart.

Example: Philip Glass's KOYAANISQATSI

-A remastered DVD-Audio and SACD will put the equivalent original CD to shame.

-Fancy power cords and silly items like bybee "quantum" purifiers, Shakti stones, CD edge markers, etc. will make NO difference in any system's sound, at least not a difference most humans can hear.

If you think you can hear a difference using any of the silly gadgets aforementioned, you are more than welcome to stop by my Northern NJ apt. and we will do a set of blind listening tests using your favorite gadgets in my system, and we'll see how good your ears are :).

I am even willing to bet you money to see whether you can hear any difference using those silly gadgets in a blind test consistently over 70% or 80% of the time.

Bottom Line: Save your money for items that DO make a difference in your system's sound: speakers, amps, pre-amps, even component and speaker crossover mods..and don't forget to be grateful to be able to enjoy whatever wonderful music you enjoy in your own system!

Here is some interesting reading:

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_11_4/feature-article-blind-test-power-cords-12-2004.html

http://www.stereophile.com/features/113/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audiophiles#Criticism_of_audiophile_marketing_practices

http://www.vxm.com/21R.64.html

http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm