Upgrading 90's equipment

[Belle427]

I currently have a Rotel RA971 amp, Marantz cd63 mk 2 ki sig cd player and some Kef Q35 floor standers from the 90's.
The setup still sounds good to me but as we are moving soon i have an excuse to spend some money on new gear!
Ive lost touch with technology somewhat and tend to still listen to cd's but also use the ipod a lot.
My question is how to i incorporate the ipod in to a modern system?
I quite like the look of the Q Acoustics 3050 floor standers so this may be a start for me, just not sure on the amp really. It may be worth me keeping the existing cd player if it still cuts it today.
Any advice would be much appreciated.

[Crackie]

The Rotel and Marantz are both very good and can easily live with new gear; the KEFs are good too. If it all sounds good to you, and the volume/balance controls on the Rotel are clean & quiet, then I would keep it all. A lot of the kit I use is the same age as yours because I've not heard anything newer which enough of an improvement to justify changing. For example my main system uses six Rotel RB-971 and RB-981 power amps which are the same age as your integrated RA-971.

If you've got an itch to scratch, and an excuse for some new gear, then how about treating yourself to a streamer, possibly with a hard drive built in ? This will work with your I-phone and give you access to over 45000 internet radio stations; there's almost too much internet radio choice but once you've selected you're favourite stations its the best way, along with Spotify, of finding new music you like.

I have a Novafidelity X12 which is used as a server for all my CDs and as I write it is ripping/archiving a few hundred vinyl albums to WAVs ( it will be doing my old cassettes too ). I often use the shuffle play feature.........it selects and plays random tracks from the hard drive; once playing any of the shuffle play tracks you can then choose to hear the remainder of the album that track is from, or all the stored tracks from that particular artist or tracks from the same genre etc etc. As a consequence of the shuffle feature I'm listening to more from my collection and listening far more often too.

There are plenty of other standard streamers available if you don't need the hard drive storage. Pioneer's N50A is well thought of but is £500; you can have an X12 for that money with hard driver server built in.

Might also be worth checking out Google Chromecast; it may do just what you want and they cost buttons......

Edited by Crackie on Saturday 21st May 23:05

[Belle427]

Thanks, i will take a look at those streamers. Very interesting piece of kit.

[legzr1]

A used N50 would leave enough from an imaginary £500 budget to source a decent NAS to feed it with files.

Around £250 should also get something like a Cambrdige Audio SM6 - an excellent sounding device with top notch DAC that would also improve on your KI sig CD player for CD playback.

[Parabola]

looking into this sort of thing too with my similarly aged equipment.
I have a NAD C541i CD Player & NAD C370 Amp.

I added an Apple TV box connected to a little Fiio DAC, into my amp, so I can stream music from my MacBook Pro or iPhone.


I was wondering if I should use a new external DAC from the CD player too?

[Emeye]

Keep it if it sounds good and as other have suggested add some form of streaming. Funnily enough I was just going to look on eBay for an old amp for my garage office. I wish I still had my 90s gear. I "sold" them to my dad when I moved out of home. He still uses them occasionally and I keep hinting about inheriting them early but he appears to have selective hearing....

[Crackie]

legzr1 said:

something like a Cambrdige Audio SM6 would also improve on your KI sig CD player for CD playback.

Why do you think it will be better ?

[legzr1]

Crackie said:

Why do you think it will be better ?

The 63 was a decent mid-priced player in its day.

I have a 17 KI sig sat in my rack and is generally regarded as a better sounding unit than the 63.
The 17 used as a transport into the SM6 makes the sound come alive.

Why do you think it isn't better?

[Du1point8]

I had one of those Rotel Amps... I would Bi-amp it.

https://www.gumtree.com/p/amplifiers/2-rotel-rb971...

2 of these and you are laughing... I sadly remember the day I blew mine up play prodigy and moved over to musical fidelity amplifiers A1 (http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Musical-Fidelity-X-A1-Phono-Integrated-Amplifier-/262443009214?hash=item3d1ad284be:g:SVQAAOSwfC9XPF70) ... sad day that.

Nowadays I don't even use separates and have a fully integrated Sonos system hooked up to NAS and spotify and it works perfectly well.

Also had/have a marantz player hidden somewhere, sadly again not used anymore.

They all used to be hooked up to my Mission 733 floor standers

[Crackie]

legzr1 said:

Crackie said:

Why do you think it will be better ?

The 63 was a decent mid-priced player in its day.

I have a 17 KI sig sat in my rack and is generally regarded as a better sounding unit than the 63.
The 17 used as a transport into the SM6 makes the sound come alive.

Why do you think it isn't better?

Just curious really. Sound quality is very subjective and the SM6 clearly improved things for you. My experiences with newer DAC technology have been less positive and I'm still using Exposure and Wadia players from the 1990s/early 2000s.

[legzr1]

Crackie said:

Just curious really. Sound quality is very subjective and the SM6 clearly improved things for you. My experiences with newer DAC technology have been less positive and I'm still using Exposure and Wadia players from the 1990s/early 2000s.

Apologies, I was expecting you to go down the 'all dacs sound the same' road - an argument favoured on other fora!

I like the sound Wadia kit makes (similar to Theta digital and Krell power amps majoring on tight bass) but the SM6 has a certain 'sparkle' and 'cleanliness' that the older Dacs seem to miss.

For the OP I think the SM6 could be an excellent choice - even the pre-amp section is a fine sounding circuit and loses little to a KRC-3 pre I currently use (another oldie but goodie).
Add in thousands if internet radio stations, a couple of USB inputs for use of HDD/SD cards and Spotify and it becomes more than a simple media renderer.

I'm not averse to older technology - sitting near the SM6 I have an AudioSector DAC1 - no over sampling, no filters and nothing over 16/44.1 can be accepted but I prefer the sound of the SM6 for almost all music.

Slightly off-topic but one really good side effect of all this mega up sampling and streaming malarkey is the availability of top notch 'old school' CD players and DACs - there's some excellent equipment out there at a tenth of original RRP!

[Crackie]

Du1point8 said:

I had one of those Rotel Amps... I would Bi-amp it.

https://www.gumtree.com/p/amplifiers/2-rotel-rb971...

those Rotel RB-971 ( and 981 ) power amps have gained a big reputation in the second hand market; prices have doubled in the last three years. Good ones now change hands at or above their original, late 90s, new prices. I use three Rotel RB-971s and three RB-981s to drive a custom active system.

http://www.audioreview.com/cat/amplification/ampli...

http://www.audioreview.com/cat/amplification/ampli...

Edited by Crackie on Saturday 28th May 14:24

[Belle427]

Thanks for all the input, plenty for me to think about.
I was browsing through a recent what hi fi magazine and richer sounds had a Cambridge audio package with th q acoustics 3050 floor standers that looked really good.
It was the cxa60, cxc and cxn.

[legzr1]

The Cambridge CX range is really good for the money. Go take a listen - RS are normally very flexible.