There is no one place to start.

What turned me onto Devin's solo stuff—I was an SYL fan before I even knew he had solo stuff—was MP3.com back in the day. Tracy had posted two songs from Infinity—"Christeen" and "Bad Devil"—and two from Ocean Machine—"Life" and "Hide Nowhere"—and two from Physicist—"Namaste" and "Material." I downloaded them all and put them on a CD—which I still have, actually. I listened to those songs until I was thoroughly obsessed! Six songs only, and I was hooked. But that taste of a little something from those three albums was simply awesome.

So, I would say you shouldn't start at one spot, but everywhere at once. Download the following songs only (I have no issues with someone selectively sampling music):

01. Namaste
02. Bad Devil
03. Regulator
04. Mountain
05. Suicide
06. Hide Nowhere
07. Gaia
08. Earth Day
09. Sit In The Mountain
10. Vampira
11. Planet Rain

Make that CD. Listen to it until you're addicted. Then happily buy everything from HDR with confidence.

I'd start with Ocean Machine because I think its the best balance of Devin's work. I prefer Terria, but it's just too damn weird and scares most people away.

And buy 'The New Black' as early as possible, since it is one of his not so perfect albums IMO, but still containes some great songs (especially 'Wrong Side' and 'Almost Again'); the album is a good introduction to the heavier Devyworld.

Hey, new to the forums, and new to Dev. I finally got into the guy (my intro was through Ayreon, oddly enough) just a month or so ago. Here's how I've done it, and I've loved it, though I may not be the metalhead that many in here seem to be (as in, SYL is a bit much for me, but we'll see about that in the future ):

Ocean Machine - Biomech
Terria
Accelerated Evolution

and in the mail now are:

Infinity
Synchestra
Physicist

I'm just a poor college student at the moment, and such splurges can be dangerous, so I went the cheap route and bought used off amazon. Heck, about ten bucks total a pop, and it gets here in three or four days, sounds like a pretty swell deal to me. It's worked thus far.