I've had quite a few "A-Ha!" moments with my HT over the years. I think the first was the acquisition of a 50" Pioneer RPTV back in 1988. At that time, 50" was *HUGE* for a TV and I can remember vividly the thrill of watching that thing for the first time.
The next "A-Ha!" moment was placing my first room treatments. I built a room in my basement for my HT in 1989 and I did an LEDE room. I had Klipsch Forte speakers at the time. They sounded so much better in the LEDE room than they sounded in my untreated room upstairs.
The next was when a friend suggested I set my speakers to "Small" and use a crossover. The improvement was totally unexpected and more significant than I ever anticipated. The Forte's had 15" PR's and extension to 30 Hz, so setting them to Small, I expected to *lose* bass. Instead, the bass improved by routing it all to the, (at the time), Earthquake subwoofer. More importantly, the rest of the audio system sounded so much better. The additional amplifier headroom just invigorated the main speakers, and the entire system played back cleaner, louder and with less distortion than before.
The next big moment for me was upgrading to Dolby Digital/DTS. The discreet surround channels were huge compared with PL.
The next big moment was when I got my first hi-def projector, a Sony VPL-HS20. I initially projected it on a piece of highly reflective, white bathroom pressboard. It had a huge hot-spot reflection of the bulb, but the picture was so big and so clear, it was astonishing. I eventually got a fixed frame Da-Lite screen, but the A-Ha moment was the projection onto that cheap piece of fiberboard.
The next big breakthrough moment was going to an AT screen. I did several other upgrades at the same time, (speakers, amp, pre/pro, BD player, etc.), but placing the speakers behind the screen eliminated the biggest complaint I had about all my previous systems: the CC below the screen. This upgrade was huge.
The last A-Ha! moment was my recent upgrade of my JL Audio subs to a pair of Seaton Sound Submersives. These subs just belt out beautiful musical bass and thunderous HT bass effects without turning a hair. They have allowed the rest of the system to really come to life. The *system* now has the output, low distortion, impact and dynamics I have been searching for since I started in this hobby well over 30 years ago.
Thanks for starting this thread KG. You don't post much anymore, but this was a good one!
Craig