On Sunday I finally broke down and bought the audio/video receiver I've been looking at for months. I was mostly wrestling with the prospect of spending so much on home theater gear. Work stress made me do it. See, when I get depressed or excessively stressed out, I tend to buy myself stuff to make myself feel better. A PowerBook here, a little electronics equipment there, and all's well for a couple days. Of course there's also drinking, but that tends to make things worse the following day. In my state, though, buying stuff can make things worse too, because the root problem is that I don't have any time, so when I buy something, I have to take time to set it up, test it out, and enjoy it. The problem just gets compounded in the end.

Anyway, so I bought a Denon AVC-3890. A Pioneer and an Onkyo were in the running, but I wanted something made in Japan. For the most part, unless you buy the absolute highest end models, the stuff is made in China or Malaysia. The 3890 is spec'ed for DVD-Audio & SACD on all channels, which is part of my intent. Natively multi-channel audio should be pretty cool.

The bad part is the speakers I wanted to get, primarily the Denon SC-T777SAs, just end-of-lifed, so I'm having a hard time finding them. Yodobashi Camera can't get them, so I tried online. The first place I tried from accepted the order, but cancelled yesterday because they didn't actually have any in stock. I tried a second place, so we'll see how it goes. The new Denons are a high-gloss finish, but they're more expensive, and moreover, they haven't released speakers of the same spec yet. Ah well. Too bad they don't sell Magneplanars here or I'd have a pair of those.

An amp with no speakers...I'm sure if I thought about it, I could make that a metaphor for my life. How about: "Lots of potential, unfortunately not applied"?