Upgrade time but where to start???

[PomBstard]

Its time to move on from the reasonable separates system I bought about 12 years ago. Its a Marantz 6000-series amp, CD, CDR, and receiver playing through a pair of Mission M72(?) floor speakers. Perfectly adequate for the room, but I think its time to come into the 21st century and go for something a little more modern and useful - but what?

I've got about 1200 CDs and listen to radio too, so what might I be looking for? I've heard about music storage systems, which play through an amp and that sounds like the sort of thing I'm after - are they any good, what limitations might they have? I'm not really looking for anything that needs a PC to kick-start it.

Ta in advance.

[Willie Dee]

Budget?

[Bullett]

A NAS for storage and Sonos for playback hooked up to any Amp and speaker combo you fancy, will do internet radio, spotify etc. Rip all your CD's to FLAC or some other lossless format and quality will be as good if not better than real-time from the CD player. Additional players from your main listening room can spread the same music round the house.

Requires a little effort but well worth it. Or you can pay someone to rip the discs for you.

I actually use Squeezebox that is slightly less user friendly than SONOS to set up and it's revolutionised my music listening.

[PomBstard]

Willie Dee said:

Budget?

Fair question, but deliberately left out. Living in Aus its a bit tricky to set in GBP. The Marantz stuff cost about GBP1200 at the time, so I'd guess around GBP1000 or equivalent.

I like the idea of the Sonos - will look a bit further into that, ta.

Also had a look at an Olive D4 the other day - looks nice and would bolt into my current amp but prob a bit over budget at AU$3500. Ant views on the smaller D3 version?

[kingston12]

I am a massive fan of Sonos. It has really got me back into listening to music at home, BUT it has cost the best part of £1,000 just to get it up and running in three rooms.

If you have no problems with your current kit, it might be worth attaching a Sonos ZP90 to the Marantz amp. If your amp is within reach of the router and you have an Android/iPhone/iPad, this could be done for £250.

Get your 1,200 CDs encoded losslessly on to your PC/Mac if you leave it on 24/7 or allow about £200 for a NAS if not.

I have not used Squeezebox, but have heard good things about it. It was the ease of use of Sonos that made me go for it. The support is second to none and the only drawback I can think of is that there are no plans to allow it to play high resolution music.

[PomBstard]

Ok, Sonos seems like the way to go. I like the idea if routing to a few rooms. But what do I rip the CDs to in a lossless format? Just to confirm I am a novice at all of this so there will be some silly questions. Ta.

[ehonda]

Bullett said:

A NAS for storage and Sonos for playback hooked up to any Amp and speaker combo you fancy, will do internet radio, spotify etc. Rip all your CD's to FLAC or some other lossless format and quality will be as good if not better than real-time from the CD player. Additional players from your main listening room can spread the same music round the house.

Requires a little effort but well worth it. Or you can pay someone to rip the discs for you.

I actually use Squeezebox that is slightly less user friendly than SONOS to set up and it's revolutionised my music listening.

This is exactly what I do. Ripping the CD's is a pain initially, but well worth it. I use Media Monkey for the ripping. Haven't tried spotify but like last.fm for it's ability to play artists 'like xyz'.