A friend of mine does audio for a local TV station and has worked on a number of independant films as a sound editor. His equipment is a bad joke.
He basically has a lot of junk that I and other friends have given or sold to him. He was using a first generation CD player, one of those Sony front loaders that sounded pretty bad, IMO. When it died, his brother gave him his old Sony 5 disc changer, and he had to admit, it sounded a lot better than his older one.
He's using A Pioneer HT in a box and a christmas special 27" TV that was on sale for 139.95.
he says it "sounds ok to me"..Sheesh.