Space and budget are huge factors in buying any audio equipment. I emptied my room entirely around 2 years ago and then cleaned and painted the whole place, laid a new wood floor, and then set up all my video & audio equipment, and then built the rest of the room around that. And I still don't have my ideal setup!
It takes time, effort, and of course money to do it all but sometimes starting from scratch is the best option. But if that really is out of the question, stick with what you know and love!
Yes, dont it just.
My attic is a great example. I have my studio setup in there. It cost me £3000 just to soundproof the room, and so now, in the middle of the night, I can hammer the hell out of the drumkit and no one can hear a thing... Bliss... Although not now cos Im in a wheelchair so bum to that, but you know what I mean.
I have my Atari setup in there, and I use the Atari for music recording and I am using Yamaha Monitors and again, these can be bettered these days, but I like the sound they give... I m used to that now.
My server is running an AMP however, with a simple 2 speaker setup. The AMP is a vinci 2125 so not the best but certainly a seriously fantastic sound, and I am using Warfdale dovedale 3 cabinets with various speakers aquired from various sources. The Bass is Sony, the Middle and Low Middle are from my wifes old Hifi that was Denon iirc and has a really warm sound and I stole them and said her Hifi Blew up ( god Im such a git ), while the tweeters are simply Maplin jobs. The crossovers are my own home made jobs so should be swapped for proper ones, but they are doing a great job, so Im not swapping when I feel I dont need to.
But these speakers are giving a sound that is simply embarrassing everything else I have looked at, so while the cabinets are 40 years old, sometimes, new isnt necessarily better.
My media PC that I knocked up recently is Bose / Xonar based.
The snag with that setup is that when quiet, you simply cannot hear the higher frequency sounds, just low to mid. When you crank it up, they come in to play and buy do they play nicely, but late at night, when you're forced to have the volume down. the sound is really poor.
I chucked my Hex core PC there to play about for a bit ( The HEX is the new Media PC but it does not fit under the unit ) and with the EQ plonked right up, ( XFI Fatality platinum ) its semi-solved that issue, but again, I like to play my music with flat EQ to get the best that the producers wanted.
Anyway, I can go on and on ( Proof right here ) and so I will leave it there.
