Welcome, Jon! I'm 20 years old and I -- like my Dad at my age -- just got the urge, too

My budget, needs, and room are eerily similar to yours. Actually, my room is relatively bigger at 11x17, but it also opens up into a kitchen in a weird way as yours does, although our weird ways might be different.

Anyway, I got a pair of M22ti's about a month ago and I absolutely love them. I use my system for music about 99% of the time, but I got the very Denon AVR-884 refurb on ecost that you are considering and it is wonderful. I heartily recommend it. The only thing it is lacking that I could see myself ever needing is pre-outs, but I don't listen at extremely high volumes so I don't know if I'll ever need more power. I certainly haven't felt power to be lacking at this point, but I'm only running two channels so that may change when I go to surround sound sometime down the road. Might be something to consider if you're going to be doing a lot of HT *AND* moving to a bigger room in the future.

For a CD/DVD player, I got the Denon DVD-2200 refurb on ecost. I wanted to be able to play SACDs and DVD-Audio discs, and the refurbed 2200 seems to be the best deal by far when it comes to universal players right now. I don't know if having the ability to play those discs is important to you; if it isn't, check out some of the other Denon refurbs on ecost. HK, Yamaha, and Onkyo are also regularly recommended around here, but the Denon refurbs on ecost are just amazing deals. And don't worry about HDCD support. The 2200 has it, I believe, but I think it's pretty much just a load of marketing BS.

I haven't bought a sub yet, although I will be doing so in the next few months. Supposedly, SVS and Rocket are going to be coming out with ~$400 box sub models any time now, so I want to wait and see how those compare to the HSU STF-2 before making my decision. If your budget allows it, though, I'd recommend looking at some of the other offerings of HSU, SVS, and Rocket. The general opinion seems to be that they are the best subwoofer values around.

For cables and so forth, check out partsexpress.com. Don't waste your money on expensive cables. For stands, check out racksandstands.com, but keep in mind that the M22ti's are wedge-shaped, so they are narrower in back than in front. I made the mistake of getting stands with 8x8 tops, and they really look silly with those little corners of metal sticking out in the back. Oh well.

And whatever you do, don't get that Bose. It's not even anywhere near the same class as Axioms.