Just remembered how good a quality stereo is!
Discussion
I've had a bit of a shuffle round at home and re-connected up my Hifi. I left it for a long time as it simply wasn't being used. I had a Cambridge Audio P500 power amp 'lying around' that I had bought a never got round to using. Bi-amping is something that I had wanted to try for quite a while and I can't believe the difference it has made to my system. It is not very fancy compared to some, consisting of:
Musical Fidelity X-A1 Integrated amp (highs)
Cambridge Audio P500 Power amp - upgraded (lows)
Technics SLPG380 CD Player
Russ Andrews Kimber 8 Cables
QED Inter-connects
Eltax Monitor III Speakers
I think in this day and age of convenience and technology it is not often you listen to music that is being well resproduced, things such as ipod docks and laptops playing a major role in peoples listening habits.
The way a good quality stereo makes a difference to the music is fantastic. My system now sounds clear, powerful and just really good in general (to me anyway)
I think I will upgrade speakers next, possibly to some Epos M5's as my room is 9ft by 9ft so not big enough to warrant floorstanders or anything bigger.
Really happy with how it is for now though!
Just thought i'd share that with you all
Musical Fidelity X-A1 Integrated amp (highs)
Cambridge Audio P500 Power amp - upgraded (lows)
Technics SLPG380 CD Player
Russ Andrews Kimber 8 Cables
QED Inter-connects
Eltax Monitor III Speakers
I think in this day and age of convenience and technology it is not often you listen to music that is being well resproduced, things such as ipod docks and laptops playing a major role in peoples listening habits.
The way a good quality stereo makes a difference to the music is fantastic. My system now sounds clear, powerful and just really good in general (to me anyway)
I think I will upgrade speakers next, possibly to some Epos M5's as my room is 9ft by 9ft so not big enough to warrant floorstanders or anything bigger.
Really happy with how it is for now though!
Just thought i'd share that with you all
I agree wholeheartedly. And I am also guilty of using portable media devices to listen to music in recent years. I do worry that all the years of improving hi-fi to get gorgeous quality audio has been lost.
I also need to follow suit and resurrect my hi-fi and listen to the cd's through the proper speakers instead of listening through tiny speakers and mp3 quality rips of my cd's.
I also need to follow suit and resurrect my hi-fi and listen to the cd's through the proper speakers instead of listening through tiny speakers and mp3 quality rips of my cd's.
My separates (Denon amp / Technics CD player and KEF speakers) got used last night for the first time in ages. Had the house to myself and there was nothing on telly so... I had a bit Kraftwerk, some Ramones and The Beautiful South. I'd forgotten how good my fairly basic set-up sounds compared to most of my listening which is done inside a car, or a DAB radio in the garage.
My mates take the piss out of me for because of my ProAc floorstanders and for having cables running round my living room.
"why have all that when you can have something discrete like my Bose sound dock"
Oh really?! Good as they are, there is just no beating good old stereo reproduction with hi-fi and traditional loudspeakers.
The trouble is, sound docks are just good enough to have made hi-fi almost obsolete.
"why have all that when you can have something discrete like my Bose sound dock"
Oh really?! Good as they are, there is just no beating good old stereo reproduction with hi-fi and traditional loudspeakers.
The trouble is, sound docks are just good enough to have made hi-fi almost obsolete.
Fatman2 said:
My mates take the piss out of me for because of my ProAc floorstanders and for having cables running round my living room.
"why have all that when you can have something discrete like my Bose sound dock"
Oh really?! Good as they are, there is just no beating good old stereo reproduction with hi-fi and traditional loudspeakers.
The trouble is, sound docks are just good enough to have made hi-fi almost obsolete.
Personally I pity them. They'll never hear how good some of their music is!"why have all that when you can have something discrete like my Bose sound dock"
Oh really?! Good as they are, there is just no beating good old stereo reproduction with hi-fi and traditional loudspeakers.
The trouble is, sound docks are just good enough to have made hi-fi almost obsolete.
Fatman2 said:
The trouble is, sound docks are just good enough to have made hi-fi almost obsolete.
Agreed; to a point. There are those of us who enjoy the finer things in life such as a well balanced car over an A-B euro box or a system that will make your hair stand on end over a convenient but largely uninvolving, characterless box. That's not too different from my first point, actually.
Whilst I have several iPod 'dock' style systems dotted arount the house, they're simply an appliance which translates to convenience and are treated as such.
My 'real' system has a room of it's own which is what it deserves, so listening to music in there is always an event.
Life is certainly darker without one.
liquidken said:
Agreed; to a point.
There are those of us who enjoy the finer things in life such as a well balanced car over an A-B euro box or a system that will make your hair stand on end over a convenient but largely uninvolving, characterless box. That's not too different from my first point, actually.
Whilst I have several iPod 'dock' style systems dotted arount the house, they're simply an appliance which translates to convenience and are treated as such.
My 'real' system has a room of it's own which is what it deserves, so listening to music in there is always an event.
Life is certainly darker without one.
Don't get me wrong. I have two iPod docks myself so they definitely have their place. But it's the notion that hi-fi is unecessary (as my mates often suggest) because you can have a one box solution that makes me chuckle, as if a Bose sound dock is on par or superior to 'proper' stereo reproduction.There are those of us who enjoy the finer things in life such as a well balanced car over an A-B euro box or a system that will make your hair stand on end over a convenient but largely uninvolving, characterless box. That's not too different from my first point, actually.
Whilst I have several iPod 'dock' style systems dotted arount the house, they're simply an appliance which translates to convenience and are treated as such.
My 'real' system has a room of it's own which is what it deserves, so listening to music in there is always an event.
Life is certainly darker without one.
I'm no elitist but it is a little sad that even good budget separates are non existent from a lot of electrical retailers nowadays.
Willber said:
I've had a bit of a shuffle round at home and re-connected up my Hifi. I left it for a long time as it simply wasn't being used. I had a Cambridge Audio P500 power amp 'lying around' that I had bought a never got round to using. Bi-amping is something that I had wanted to try for quite a while and I can't believe the difference it has made to my system. It is not very fancy compared to some, consisting of:
Musical Fidelity X-A1 Integrated amp (highs)
Cambridge Audio P500 Power amp - upgraded (lows)
Technics SLPG380 CD Player
Russ Andrews Kimber 8 Cables
QED Inter-connects
Eltax Monitor III Speakers
I think in this day and age of convenience and technology it is not often you listen to music that is being well resproduced, things such as ipod docks and laptops playing a major role in peoples listening habits.
The way a good quality stereo makes a difference to the music is fantastic. My system now sounds clear, powerful and just really good in general (to me anyway)
I think I will upgrade speakers next, possibly to some Epos M5's as my room is 9ft by 9ft so not big enough to warrant floorstanders or anything bigger.
Really happy with how it is for now though!
Just thought i'd share that with you all
I've posted fairly recently about an old system a mate donated to my garage. It's a Kenwood KA-3020SE Amp, A Nad CD player (unknown model but only around 7-10 years old) and a pair of Mission 731s, possibly a later pair, maybe even SEs. It sounds fantastic and in the garage I can have it set up almost perfectly. Musical Fidelity X-A1 Integrated amp (highs)
Cambridge Audio P500 Power amp - upgraded (lows)
Technics SLPG380 CD Player
Russ Andrews Kimber 8 Cables
QED Inter-connects
Eltax Monitor III Speakers
I think in this day and age of convenience and technology it is not often you listen to music that is being well resproduced, things such as ipod docks and laptops playing a major role in peoples listening habits.
The way a good quality stereo makes a difference to the music is fantastic. My system now sounds clear, powerful and just really good in general (to me anyway)
I think I will upgrade speakers next, possibly to some Epos M5's as my room is 9ft by 9ft so not big enough to warrant floorstanders or anything bigger.
Really happy with how it is for now though!
Just thought i'd share that with you all
Sounds better than my Yamaha 750SE home cinema amp, Marantz CD player (4 years old) and Mission M73s, loads better in fact although the speakers are set up for home cinema and convenience, not straight audio listening. Although when my missus is out and I rearrange the speakers it does sound far better.
I always end up preaching to people about how good seperates sound and I can't honestly believe how people listen to rubbish systems but I suppose people just aren't as interested as others!
A few years ago I gave a 'spare' system to my sister ~ it was a Technics SLPG520A CD, Cyrus One amp and a pair of KEF Coda 7s. It still surprises me each I hear it again. Convenience, build quality & aesthetics may have moved on but I've not noticed any notable improvement in amp, CD or speaker sound quality during the the past 25 years.
Edited by CRACKIE on Thursday 7th April 22:57
Appreciation of true hifi never really entered the mainstream because it was considered "geeky".
It's history, nerds making their own stuff, magazines that reinforced that and a cottage industry that never really became mass market.
Believers know different.
Sink back in your armchair, close your eyes and immerse yourself in the soundstage before your ears.
Pure heaven.
It's history, nerds making their own stuff, magazines that reinforced that and a cottage industry that never really became mass market.
Believers know different.
Sink back in your armchair, close your eyes and immerse yourself in the soundstage before your ears.
Pure heaven.
WhoseGeneration said:
Appreciation of true hifi never really entered the mainstream because it was considered "geeky".
It's history, nerds making their own stuff, magazines that reinforced that and a cottage industry that never really became mass market.
Believers know different.
Sink back in your armchair, close your eyes and immerse yourself in the soundstage before your ears.
Pure heaven.
Amen to that brotherIt's history, nerds making their own stuff, magazines that reinforced that and a cottage industry that never really became mass market.
Believers know different.
Sink back in your armchair, close your eyes and immerse yourself in the soundstage before your ears.
Pure heaven.
I've just bought one of those little Class T amps off eBay - £40. I have read some interesting words about them and thought for the money it's got to be worth a try. I have also bought some old Celestion DL8 speakers off eBay to experiment with.
I could really do with some good stands to be honest, hopefully found some of them pretty cheap too - again eBay!
I can see myself ending up with piles of gear................
I could really do with some good stands to be honest, hopefully found some of them pretty cheap too - again eBay!
I can see myself ending up with piles of gear................
You can still have high end sound with an ipod. It's just you need to have lossless data and a DIGITAL dock like the Wadia, which bypasses the onboard ipod DAC and amp. Then you can feed that bitstream direct into your high end DAC, amp and speakers. So fidelity and convenience is easy.
Well i'm just listening to my little tripath amp I bought off eBay for £40. I think it's actually better than my MF X-A1 and it's still got a lot of burning in to do.
I am using Monitor Audio R652 speakers with Monitor Audio metal stands, sand filled (about 20kg each) on granite plinths. The sound is brilliant! Currently listening to some massive attack.
I am using Monitor Audio R652 speakers with Monitor Audio metal stands, sand filled (about 20kg each) on granite plinths. The sound is brilliant! Currently listening to some massive attack.
You don't even "need" lossless formats, that's another myth that circulates the Internet without any objective comparison to find out if that really is the case.
Once I went to a so called hifi bake off (kind of like a PH meet of the hifi world). People would bring their own kit etc, some very expensive stuff too, and they agreed to do a blind test to see if they could tell the original lossless track from a well encoded mp3 file at a high bitrate and also another done at 128k over a variety of music of their choosing. Not one managed to guess correctly consistently... And trust me, guessing was what they were doing! This was their favourite music, played back using thousands of pounds of hifi equipment. I think they were quite ashamed
so ashamed they wouldn't even admit they couldn't tell the difference once back to the anonymity of their forum 
All it told me was never to bother trying to reason with a hifi geek. I still have my hifi but I no longer bother "socialising" on these places, full of narrow mindedness. No wonder your average Joe was put off when you saw how sad some of them appear to be.
Back OT I use a computer plugged into a cheap beresford dac, into an old hk6550 amp and a pair of rega elas, using £3 marlin cable, the whole lot cost me about £400 (not the computer) and it basically sounds as good to my ears as stuff that cost a lot more, and that's using mp3 that apparently cannot ever sound good
Once I went to a so called hifi bake off (kind of like a PH meet of the hifi world). People would bring their own kit etc, some very expensive stuff too, and they agreed to do a blind test to see if they could tell the original lossless track from a well encoded mp3 file at a high bitrate and also another done at 128k over a variety of music of their choosing. Not one managed to guess correctly consistently... And trust me, guessing was what they were doing! This was their favourite music, played back using thousands of pounds of hifi equipment. I think they were quite ashamed
so ashamed they wouldn't even admit they couldn't tell the difference once back to the anonymity of their forum All it told me was never to bother trying to reason with a hifi geek. I still have my hifi but I no longer bother "socialising" on these places, full of narrow mindedness. No wonder your average Joe was put off when you saw how sad some of them appear to be.
Back OT I use a computer plugged into a cheap beresford dac, into an old hk6550 amp and a pair of rega elas, using £3 marlin cable, the whole lot cost me about £400 (not the computer) and it basically sounds as good to my ears as stuff that cost a lot more, and that's using mp3 that apparently cannot ever sound good
TameRacingDriver said:
You don't even "need" lossless formats, that's another myth that circulates the Internet without any objective comparison to find out if that really is the case.
You'd struggle to find more bulls
t outside of HiFi unless you get into MMGW. Google 'audiophile wood'.ETA- I'll do it for you...
http://www.ilikejam.org/blog/audio/audiophile.html
Edited by grumbledoak on Monday 18th April 09:40
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