Well as it looks like their are a few (about 3 so far) that are into hifi and possibily AV gear I thought I'd start a thread. Not to show off or anything but to compare ideas / opinions. My home setup. Stereo: Dali royal tower speakers Black Rhodinium Jive bi-wire speaker cables Roksan Kandy K2 amp Can't remember the interconnect but I think its a Black Rhodinium something Jolida glass FX DAC II Sonos connect Synology j213+ with x2 3Tb western digital black (I think) drives in raid. TV Samsung 46inch something or other think it maybe a 7000seris but its not 3D Monitor audio HD 270 fronts, 250 centre, 90 on stands for rear. RS W12 sub woofer. Yamaha RXV2067 AV amp. (an amazing pairing with monitor audio speakers) Cables are provided by the shop I got this gear from. PS3 for blu-rays etc Portable rig Cowan 64Gb J3 V-sonic GR-07 IEM's One mistake I made is paying a stupid amount of money for a HDMI cable for my telly. I'm actually pissed off at the money I wasted on it as it has no bearing picture or S.Q. It is digital so its 1 & 0's. If there is interference then there would be no signal. I'm at the point where I'm happy with my lot apart from a lack of 3D capability on my TV set up but thats moot now as we're in the phils. Any improvement (to me) will be minimal now and will cost a ridiculous amount of cash. I'm looking at maybe changing my headphones though for my portable rig and was looking into balanced armature phones as mine are dynamic. Only problem with this is the bass in B.A phones isn't normally too good. There are now hybrid phones that use a dynamic driver and B.A for the mids and trebles. I've only just heard of these though and more reading is needed.
I'm not an audiophile but I'm going to invest in some hifi equipment When I get back home to sunny England. I just stream music from my PC to Home cinema Panosonic,and play cd's through the bluray.
I used to spend silly money on hifi many years ago, I once spent £900 on a Denon D110 back in the 90's. Having worked in radio stations for many years, I got used to working with top-end pro devices, so you can understand I can't be using any cheap nasty low cost stuff. But the problem I've found now is audio technology is advancing so quickly, it's hard to decide what is the ideal solution. My home hi fi is a trusty old Sony MDX unit bought in 2002 and still going strong. It has AM/FM, Mini Disc (remember them lol) and CD player, with myriad of inputs and outputs both analogue and digital - very important as I can hook up many devices. However, finding a replacement is not easy. I've sold off my CD collection and *cough* ripped the whole lot to mp3 (at 256k) and uploaded the whole lot to Amazon Music Cloud where they are accessed by any device connected to the internet, and can be easily downloaded again if needed to play offline. I also store the whole lot on external hard drive, so if Amazon go tits up or the internet dies, I've got the whole backed up. I'm now buying only mp3 music, I don't bother with CD's anymore, and I stopped using MiniDiscs a long time ago, but still sometimes play them as I have a lot of old radio stuff I used to do years ago. So therein lies the problem: I need a new hi fi that has a network connection so I can stream music from my Amazon music collection and the many web radio stations I often listen to. Then I would need a hi fi that plays music via Bluetooth so I can stream audio content from a portable device, be it smartphone, tablet or laptop. The hifi must also have DAB radio with FM as well. Add to that a USB port for music on the external hard drive. Mustn't forget, a built in CD player as well for occasional use. Oh, it must have a decent speakers and loads of inputs and outputs for connecting up TV's, karaoke, games consoles. Not bothered about ipod docks or anything like that as I don't care for Apple stuff. Does such a hi fi exist? I've seen a couple made by Panasonic that come close, but, still, its Panasonic..
Rob, take a look at Sonos i tihnk that cover most if not all of your requirements. I have our "main" hifi in the dining room and the intention is to get Sonos units through the house. Other manufactures do similiar stuff but they are more expensive. All you need is a internet router and away you go. The advantage of Sonos is it does piggy back on your wifi network as it creates its own. All you need is a smart device (phone, tablet etc) download the app and you can control the units from that as long as the smart devcie has a wifi signal you're good to go. Sound quality is pretty good on the Play 5, a little woolly and not the last word in detail but it is certainly accpetable. They don't have a CD player but you can still hook one up to it
I was into hi-fi for years and have a quad 66/606 system. With having little ones I never get the time to do anything anymore and relaxing is out of the question When they are in school I may get some time again but my wife needs a break even more than me. I had a home network once and realised that mp3's became much more handy than cd's. I have hundreds of cd's too. I look with interest here at the ways mp3's/flac can be streamed as time goes on. My laptop is the centre of things for me, play audio and video but mostly through earphones so as not to disturb the wife and kids. Well, the new Jon Hopkins is brilliant for me but my better half likes Celine Dion and things like that. It's funny but I went off girls pretty quickly growing up if they didn't like what I thought was good music. My wife thinks my musical tastes are too noisy.......but some ambient I enjoy is very minimal and that's not so bad for her. How things change and the important things change to family and not things for a mostly selfish bachelor life. Now I get a big kick watching my little ones jumping up and down to the beat of some music...
Ohh, go on then: 2 Channel Listening Room: Mordaunt Short Mezzo 6 floor standers Chord Carnival SilverScreen Bi-Wire Speaker cable JungSon JA88D Class A amplifier Sugden CD21 CD Player Chord Cobra Interconnects Beresford TC7510 DAC (for use with Apple Airport Express Optical out) 7.1 Channel Living Room: Samsung 50" 1080P Plasma Onkyo TX-NR5009 Receiver BK Electric XXLS400 Sub Mission Elegante E82 Fronts (Bi-amped), E8c Center, E80 Surrounds and Rears (7.1 setup) Chord Carnival SilverScreen Bi-Amp and Bi-Wire Speaker cable Chord Rumour 2 Speaker cable for the surrounds Various Digital interconnects (HDMI/Optical) Mac Mini running Plex Media Server and Plex Home Theatre 30TB (raw) FreeNAS i7 Storage Server for media (movies, music, photos) i7 VMware ESXi Host to run Virtual Machines for CouchPotato, SickBeard, SABnzbd, Headphones Sky+ HD 2TB (I did have an Xbox 360 and PS3 but they were stolen in July during a house party while I was in PI :/) No big deal because I hardly ever game (never now LOL) and I don't use optical disks at all any more. Insurance has just paid out 6 months later... I did have a Denon AVC-A1XVA monster amplifier! It's currently looking forlorn on the kitchen floor since the (upgraded from 720p XV spec to 1080p XVA) output board started to fail 2 years after the upgrade . That was £5000 when I bought it! It lasted me 7 years... not really a very good reflection on Denon build quality.
My kit is in storage and has been for several years, no way that I could possibly use it in this flat. To be honest it is so long ago that I can't even remember what I have, the main CD player was an SACD Sony thing, mid range about 350 quid back in 2000, Denon amplifier, Yamaha tuner and a lovely pair of Tannoy Revolution R3's, I miss having a proper home to use them in, one day I will ship that kit to Manila. In the past I have had several systems, none were really high end but all my systems compared well with my mate who did spend silly money on top end kit, he really was a perfectionist and had several top end sets of speakers over the years, I think he's on ProAc's now, he paired with a Quad pre/power amp (valve) combo for many years not sure what he has now but it was always stunningly good kit. These days the only HiFi component I am interested in is a good pair of headphones, if I had the money before I went over to the Phils I would have bought a pair of Bose noise cancelling headphones for use in flight and in my room so as not to wake the family who tend to sleep early, I know they are not the ultimate in sound quality but they are very good at cancelling noise, saying that I can sleep 8 hours on a flight easy these days so they would not be a real necessity.
