and is more expensive and more complicated to set up. I would never recommend separates for a normal stereo or home theatre surround system. Likewise for most add-on products, such as "power conditioners", fancy cables and most accessories. The only "add-on" product I can think of that actually improves sound quality is acoustic treatment. As Winer suggests above, you only need speakers, a media player and a receiver. That's it. These are probably components you already have and we'll detail how to upgrade their sound in a bit, but first we need to get your room in order. The most important free tweak you can do to increase the quality of your sound is to calibrate your speakers and test your room. Acoustic treatment and stereo calibration require a little work on your part and we'll start with that in the next section. Set Up and Calibrate Your Stereo to Find Where You Need Improvement Before you go out and spend your life savings on a bunch of stereo gear, it's best to take a look at what you already have and see how much quality you can push out of it. To test your current stereo, calibrate your speakers and look at how the room affects the sound. You will need a good album to test your setup. How do you pick which recording to start with? Michael Fremer weighs in: A good recording of acoustic music is the best way to judge a system's quality, especially if you