1) Subscription to Astronomy and after a year Sky and Telescope

2) A good star chart. Learn the stars

3) A nice pair of binoculars. You'd be amazed what can see. This might really be all you need for casual gazing.

http://celestron.telescopes.com/products/celestron-skymaster-15x70-center-focus-14955.html

4) A Dobsonian is going to be your best bang-for-the-buck. If you are not doing photography, then a star drive is really over kill. The new drives are nice in that they don't need polar alignment and catalogue objects can be brought in to the field of view with the push of a button, but for me that really takes the fun out. My rec for a Dob is actually being closed out. This 12" Dob is going to have about 2x the light gathering power of the Celestron

http://celestron.telescopes.com/products/zhumell-12-inch-dobsonian-reflector-telescope-44098.html

PS You think audio gets expensive, well.....