[icehog3]

Brands make a huge difference in every type of supplement.

In some cases, it's just "what works best for you"....it's that way for some of us here, one pre-workout mix works great for one but not for another....trial and error might be necessary, unless you find a good one right off the hop.

With protein, BCAAs and other supps, the quality of ingredients varies immensely from brand to brand. A good whey protein will have whey isolates as the first ingredient, whereas most have whey concentrates....not nearly as "friendly" for absorbtion. Better than half (I'd say 90%) of protein supplements out there are junk. You can get some good recommendations from guys here, like I said, I use Optimum Nutrition for protein (Gold Standard), and Optimum Nutrition BCAAs as well as Scivation Xtend (which has some other ingredients for post workout recovery as well.)

Best prices I have found are at FitRX.com. Sign up for their newsletter, they have numerous sales and free shipping offers every month.