Your first experience in audio home theater?

[Homura]

I'm still new to this forum and am gaining tons of knowledge thanks to everyone that posts on these forums. A few of you might remember me asking about running audio through a computer and in the end I was advised to save my few hundred dollars and keep what I had. A few weeks have now gone by and I am loving my little set-up of the ps3 and my projector. I have boughten about 20 blus in the past few weeks and love coming home to watch em. However, I am slowly yearning more and more for a better sound experience. With computer speakers, I can't really place my speakers in all corners of the room and they just don't give a home theater feeling that I want.

Now I would think it is safe to assume that most of you on here did not dive straight into the home theater world and spend $10,000 or even $5,000; in the same way that most teenagers didn't not drive a Porsche Carrera for their first car. If you did, well then hooray for rich parents that spoil their kids. On a random side note, my first car was 1973 VW Thing that my dad and I did a full restoration on and took to car shows (I only drove it once ; my first car I drove was a Honda Civic). Anyhow, where did you guys start when you began purchasing your audio equipment?

I am fortunate enough to have my parents that are putting me through college. I have a part time job because it is a break from school and it provides some cash for the school year. Luckily, I don't widdle my money away at fast food and instead save my money. Now I'm a month away from graduation and am assuming that I will reap the same graduation gift that my brothers in the past have from the parents and grandparents. On top of that, I believe I will get a research grant for the summer of about $5,000. Obviously I need to save some, perhaps most of the money. But say I did have a nice little budget to enter into the other half of the hd experience and invest in some speakers. Is it the smartest thing to go straight into a system like polk rti a9's and a3's with a csi a6 and a psw 505 with a comparable receiver? Or are there slow steps that should be taken? What were some of your experiences when you first got into this realm? I understand that I should wait four years til I'm a dentist, or maybe a few more til I'm an established one, until I get my dream system. But I need something solid that will last me for the next 5-10 years.