I’m kind of crazy about music. And while I can hardly play a kazoo with any melodic proficiency, my music library is by far one of my most prized possessions. So when I finally became tired of listening to my music over the tiny speakers on my laptop, it’s no surprise that I jumped for a set of 5.1 surround speakers and complementary receiver. After a couple of hours of reading comparisons and shopping online, I admittedly went a little overboard and bought a $500 system that I paid $230 for on Overstock.com.

Covering my feelings of remorse with my thoughts of how insanely cool it would be to have the most powerful sound system in my building, I patiently tracked my shipments. Four days later, I was waiting at the mailroom package window when the UPS man wheeled in two massive boxes of Sherwood components. As I signed for my packages, the man in brown asked exactly what I was going to do with 500 watts of power in a dorm room. “I have absolutely no idea,” was my simple and honest reply.

As soon as I got the boxes to my room—which was no small feat considering I live on the fourth floor in a building with no elevator—I tore into them with an exuberance normally reserved for Christmas morning. I confirmed my roommate’s suspicions that I am indeed a complete lunatic as I moved around the room contemplating how to arrange the speakers to create a halfway acceptable acoustic setting. Eventually his curiosity got the best of him and he broke out of his apathy toward our new possessions. “That’s a pretty big subwoofer. I wonder if the people below us will be able to hear it,” he said as a smile broke across his face. “I hope they hate us by theend of the year.”

As word spread of my purchase, guys from my hall began to trickle in to admire the wares. In a stereotypical teenage male response, most went nuts over the powered subwoofer while others offered a fabricated expertise in audio engineering and acoustics. It took a quick $70 trip to the local Best Buy for all of the RCA, optical, and 1/8” stereo cables needed to connect our TV, Sega, Nintendo, Sony Playstation 2 and computers to the system. After an equally quick assembly of the wires, it was time to test the system. I hit play on my laptop and the first smooth notes of Peter Frampton’s “Do You Feel Like We Do” began to flow from every corner of the room. The bass was rich, the highs crisp. I turned to my roommate and said, smiling from ear to ear, “This is going to be one Hell of a semester.”

Tony Brown is a freshman at University of Missouri. He is a regular contributor to Digital Straight Talk, writing about media and consumer habits from a college-kid perspective.