i've just moved to the senn cx-series for working out, iem's are amazing but i tend to catch myself listening to things way too loudly at the gym and i need a little inside-noise to get through on a bike.

headphones are amazing in the sense you're able to go buy a pair of senn 595's and plug them in unamped and get basically the same shit coming into your ears as you'd get some contour's through a pre/solid-stage setup. two hundred bucks=five thousand bucks in headphone-amplified loudspeaker money.

revels, simaudio, bel canto and shit like that starts decorating large spaces well for you. and its more fun than furniture. although there are times it's fun to use horrible amounts of electricity to stand in your living room blasting the magnificent seven, the emi wagner tristan recording, or slash's estranged solo(hey, it was badass, then slash admitted it was the hardest solo he'd ever played but the best on any guns album confirmed it) through some serious fucking speakers and ugly levinson/bryston solid-state overkill at times.

then hundreds of pounds of audio equipment seems appropriate, two fucking channels please and no, marantz and denon recievers are not good for anything but saving private ryan. if you can work a speaker into the room's decor well enough to not drive chicks nuts, it means you're able to move it around too much-i can't decorate but i can set up a room around spikes and a few hundred-pounds of loudspeaker fine, furniture and such fill in around it.