I live in a condominium apartment and am currently using a cheapo 5.1 Sony HTIB sound setup purchased about 5 years ago (paired with a 50" Pioneer Plasma, which I'm enjoying immensely). I would love to upgrade my sound system, but iat the same time it would kill me to waste money on a system I would never utlize in fear of disturbing my current or future neighbors.

It seems my apartment is relatively soundproof ... I never hear the neighbors although they have two kids. The acoustics are not great as there is a floor to wall glass window one one side of the TV (about 8 feet away) and a large open space to the other side of the TV opening to the dining room.

I have a couple of questions:

1) At lower volumes, would the sound improvement in a higher end system still be significant?

2) Do higher quality sound and louder systems go hand-in-hand or are there systems I should consider that are optimized for sound quality at the expense of loudness?

3) For a $1500 to $3000 budget range, as low frequencies would be causing the most noise for the neighbors, would the money be better spent not getting a subwoofer and investing in the other components?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

id go w a little higher end setup. i live in an apartment so as far as volume goes, i put foam pads under spkrs especially woofers (subs), it 'acoustically decouples' them from room/building, allowing for more volume w out disturbing others. i think it improves the sound also. u can find them for sale but i made my own.

1) yes. At all volume levels. High quality does not necessarily mean loud. You can buy very cheap equipment that would be far far louder than far more expensive high-end equipment.

2) No, again see #1.

3) If your apartment is relatively soundproof as you mention, I wouldn't shy away from a subwoofer, but especially if listening to loud movies with a lot of bass, I would be aware about listening at night and that sort of thing. Obviously it's good to talk to your neighbors and see how or if they are bothered at all. They may or may not hear, depending. Just because you have an audio system doesn't mean you have to listen at a loud volume. In addition, there are night modes on receivers as well for this, etc, you can turn down or off the sub if listening late, etc.

Thanks for the help! This is really appreciated!

Also, I find the general rule that the center channel being the "most important" speaker is doubly true for apartment dwelling. Being forced to continuously turn the volume up to hear dialog can make the rest of the sound effects very loud. I would shop with this mind... Good luck!