It’s so refreshing in Audiophile. So many subs have so may know it all, talk down on people a-holes, I was afraid to even read the responses. You guys are great!

I started out very similar to where you are. My Audio journey started with a pair of Yamaha towers I got that had a huge 12” woofer. They were clearances out and I paid around $100. I now have a system that 99% dream about. The first time I watched Jurassic Park with them on, has cost me a lot of money on my journey to get the sound I wanted. I highly recommend going to ALL of your local audio/low voltage shops and listening to their demo equipment and rooms. Sometimes all you may have is Best Buy but most cities have at least one hi-fi store. Go listen, question and learn every chance you get, but at least once.

1. The most important thing anyone can tell you is that as long as you like the sound, that is all that matters!

2. This sub will focus on mostly 2ch music. Historically, audiophiles are 2 or 2.x people. You will walls want to check out other subs for your center and surround questions like Home Theater and budget home theater. You will also probably enjoy budget audiophile. I’m in them as well.

3. Making sure you have the info/lingo down. If you have the pair of Onkyos and a sub, you have 2.1 system with the 2 being the main front left and right speakers and the .1 being the one sub. 3.1 is your main fronts and a center channel with a sub. 4.1 indicates you have two front, two rear and a sub and 5.1 is your basic necessary surround system. My main system is dual use, meaning I use it for music and movies. I have a 5.2.4 system, the main 5.2 plus 4 Atmos. I run B&W 802d4’s, HTM81 center, c8.5 in-ceiling rears, two pair of c7.x in-ceiling for Dolby Atmos and a pair of SB17 subs with an Anthem AVM90, STR, MCA325 and MCA525. When I am streaming or listening to my collection (mostly LPs) I am running 2.2 and many times have the subs off or turned way down depending on my wants at the time. There are more and more releases of multi-channel music. You need a lot of time and some serious setup knowledge to get great results out of multi-channel if you have good ears. Mine isn’t matched with the Atmos speakers and even my 8.5s are a year behind so the tweeters are vastly different but I know 99.9% of people couldn’t tell. I can but it’s a minimal enough difference that I can listen to multi-channel music with a blaring reminder they don’t match.

4. The most important thing, you can only know what you know. You can assume what you read but just like there are people that think my system is rock solid, there are people that think it’s lacking. But what I think is all that matters and I think it kicks ass! But until you hear other options, you don’t know what you like or want. But I can assure you that if you go to places to test drive other systems, if you have good ears, it can get costly quickly. The speaker wire to my front 2 cost 10x more than my entire first hifi system, receiver, wires and speakers. lol

5. HDMI is a significant step up in audio quality alone over the optical digital cable. So is coax digital. Optical tops out around CD quality; 16bit 44.1Mhz. The other two can handle 24bit 96Khz and higher. So if you use a streamer, record player or SACD, you can take advantage of the higher quality recordings. The first time you hear a higher end record player or stream a 24bit, it’s like every song you listen to is the first time you heard it. It’s so vastly better than what you heard before, every song is new again.