molgrips… I hate to break it to you, but with just the resistance and a capacitance in a cable you won’t get a ‘resonant frequency’, you’ll just get a low pass filter. To get any resonance you’ll need some inductance in there as well…

Now, for the cable to give a roll-off in the audio band you’ll be looking a some rather strangely made interconnects as they’d need a huge capacitance…

RudeBoy… you are correct up to a point, but that point is something like thin bell wire, anything over that and the differences become negliable, and you’ll not see any difference on an oscilloscope, in the audio band at least.

On the whole it’s all snake oil and bunkum… but always jolly good fun poking sticks at the audiophiles every now and again… 😀

I would seriously consider buying secondhand, CD, Amp, Speakers are all mature technology.

The rule of thumb is that 10% of the system cost should be spent on cables.

Well chosen stereo gear works well in any room.

One piece of advice, do not buy just on the reviews on ‘what hi-fi” imo their highly reviewed equipment sounds so neutral it’s bland. Go into a store like richer sounds and ask to hear a few. So much mumbo jumbo around hifi, so let your ears do the deciding, oh and get some good cables, they do make a difference…

As for the thing about spending the most on your source – CD player or whatever – I think that’s rubbish.

Really? My LP12 kicks seven shades of sh*te out of my Arcam CD player.

I have an old NAD amp hooked up to some wharfedale diamond 8.3 floorstanders, sourced from my pioneer dvd player, its not the best setup, would much prefer to have a seperate cd source from the dvd, but haven’t got the space, but it does have a nice warm balanced sound. I’m using QED silver anniversary cables on this set up (equal distance 3m run to each speaker), cost £5 p/m, and was a really worthwhile investment.

One thing to remember with hi-fi is that it obeys the rule of diminishing returns, just because something costs twice as much doesnt make it twice as good.

momo

You could use a DAC and upgrade your CD playing.

As most people here have said, speakers can sound remarkably different in the same range. I used to sell hi-fi, and went to all the shows to see the latest kit. I’ve heard really high-end systems costing thousands that I couldn’t listen to for more than one track, and others that were a tenth of the price I could have sat and listened to all day. My main system is a Yamaha DSP-AX2 amp, with a set of Sony Chorus surround speakers, with a Yamaha DVD-S1500 SACD/DVD-A player. The amp and speakers I got for £750, half price ex-demos from the shop I used to work at, and the player was £170, also ex-demo. The sound quality, for me is as good as I could want, and the little Yam seems to be able to extract lots of detail from regular cd’s, as well as more exotic cd’s and audio DVD’s. Look around for a multi-format DVD player as an alternative to a vanilla cd player, you could then couple it up to your tv and get more from film soundtracks. Some people get a bit snobbish about the signal source, but I’m chuffed to bits with my Yamaha. A mate bought a Marantz DVD player that upscales to 1080p, and plays high quality audio cd’s, that cost him £650! He spent £350 on cables for his KEF surround speakers too. Personally, I always rated B+W and KEF, while I always found Mission speakers a bit harsh, but that was years back when cd players were nowhere near as good as they are now. Mordant Short are worth a look, too. Have fun, and always keep in mind it’s YOUR music you’re listening to, in your home, so it has to sound good to you. One thing worth pointing out, is that proximity to walls makes a huge difference to a speaker’s bass. A large speaker too close to a wall can sound really boomy, and bass-heavy, while smaller speakers often require a wall close behind to enhance the bass, so this will dictate wether you go floor stand or wall mount. It might be worth looking at a subwoofer/ satallite speaker set-up, these can sound remarkable, and take up very little space. Good luck!

right then seems like some of you know what you are talking about.

We’re about to rebuild our house and the main space will be an open plan living/dining/kitchn with a sloping roof going from 2.5m up to a max of about 4.5ish from memory. Room will be 8m by 8m give or take. I had pondered putting Bose cubes up in all 4 corners and a sub by the tv which will be central to one wall. I thought this mainly for space reasons.
At the mo i have floor stand missions, a decent Denon amp, nakamichi tape deck, linn record deck and a marantz cd player – all ok stuff. I want a decent sound and thought that the floor standers won’t really fit in. Good idea or not ?

Oh and the amp also runs a sweet pair of Polk outdoor speakers on the deck which i would want to keep.

I have the B&W MT20 sub sat system, it rocks!

Compact floorstanders should be OK for you room NZcol, but if you like the ‘bose sound’ go for it 🙂 Adding a centre speaker and having a home cinema system would be a good option.

If you are buying new, ensure that the dealer will accept returns if the speakers don’t get on with your room.

Conks

Off to Ritcher Sounds this afternoon. Will keep you all posted.
Thanks for the advice….

I think.

conkerman – yeah problem with the floorstanders is where to put them etc relative to everything else. What I might do is put the wiring in for high level speakers in all 4 corners and some spares in each side and below TV space (I have 200m of speaker wire at the moment – don;t ask). Then try the Missions and see if it works.
Main thing is a)cost of the Bose speakers and more pertinently b)the **** that owns the Bose shop in Wellington is a wnkr and I refuse to buy stuff from him.

I bought my rotel setup from sevenoaks hifi, they were very good, I went in the week before said I wanted to try these amps, speakers and cd players in all combinations and they set it all up a week later for me to come in and try them all out, i had about 5 cds and played a couple of tracks from each.

I got completely paranoid as mate was ‘helping’ me spend the money and i though the whole interconnects, cd player costs etc… was all smoke and mirrors. I finally settled on b&w speakers and rotel amp & Cd player. But said to the guy I just don’t think you get any difference from a cheapy or really expensive setup.

He got a 50 dvd player out plugged into the same amp and speakers and it sounded awful then he got a £2500 cd player and said although you’d never put something this good through your amp or speakers. he played the same tracks on it. It was mind blowingly amazing, you felt like the band was right there in front of you, you could hear everything… Don’t underestimate the quality of the source.

in a cable you won’t get a ‘resonant frequency’, you’ll just get a low pass filter.

Which is what I was talking about. With resistance and capacitance in a system it would form an RC circuit which would absorb energy at a certain frequency. Hence giving a notch filter effect. The frequency would be 1/RC and given that the resistance and capacitance values of the interconnect were printed on the packet, I worked it out and the results were consistent with my observations ie the one with the higher R and C gave much more in the top end and much more texture and colour – from very high frequency harmonics.

Don’t underestimate the quality of the source.

Agreed stufield. However, there’s clearly going to be a major difference between a £50 DVD player and a £2.5k CD player. But what about the difference between a £300 CD player and the £2.5k? Or the £300 and the £600? I’d say it’s worth concentrating more on speakers as they affect the total sound much more than the source does. In this day and age, with digital reproduction of course.

I had pondered putting Bose cubes up in all 4 corners

Generally it’s best to avoid putting speakers in the corners. Most speakers are designed to work best close to a flat wall. Too close to the corners will give rise to distortion.

Although the Bose cubes may have been designed like that.

Don’t know too much about Hi Fi, but my brother is interested in that stuff, he told me that this site: Superfi has some good prices.

He went to Richer Sounds to buy some speakers on sale but came back with nothing pissed off as well and said that the customer service there was awful (Edinburgh branch) and couldn’t get any help or advice from them.

I just use some Logitech 2.1 speakers with my laptop and it’s good enough for me 🙂

£200 for speakers and CD??

That’s a tough one. I would buy secondhand as £200 won’t get you anything very much new.

eBay!

Castle speakes sound great and are extremely well finished. I have seen mint Castle Severns go for as little as £120. Not sure these would be right in your room though, for the partnering equipment, or suit your listening tastes.

Your options are extensive and there is no right answer. The less you spend the fewer choices you have, which might turn out to be an advantage.

On a related note what is the best way to use your computer as the sound source?

I have a decent separates stereo and use the compute wired into it as one source. The 2.5 mm output jack from the soundcard into the amp. Is it worth upgrading the soundcard? Does the quality of the CD drive in the ‘puter matter? Is it best to use a digital output from the ‘puter and a separate DAC?

Ta.

NZcol.

Lol the Bose shops I have been in have been the same.

other choices for sub sat systems are.

Mission M-cube (Very similar to BOSE in looks).
Tannoy Arena.
KEF KHT.
B&W MT series.

Check out the creative audio website, lots of bits and bobs on there.

Conks

IMO the single most cost effective thing to improve your sound is to put the speakers in the right place.

TJ; my Mac has a dijical optical output, and I understand you can connect a DAC to this, for the best sound quality from a dijical file. Obviously, AIFF is going to sound a bit better than squashed MP3. You can get a soundcard with optical outputs that will slot into your PC.

I think I was in a similar position to this about 10yrs ago. I wanted a decent hi-fi, but couldn’t really afford any high-end stuff.
Richer Sounds was then much more about hi-fi than all the multi-media stuff they flog now. They used to give you mugs whenever you bought stuff/brollies if it was raining etc. They were great shops. Now they just seem full of ill-informed sales people trying to get rid of as much cheap tat as possible. I am sure there are some bargains in there, but it used to seem like they were really into their stuff, whereas now I get the impression it’s more about getting the sale.

I ended up getting a NAD 3020i amp which was only £150 to begin with (blimey, thinking about it, that was in 1994!) and I got it for £80. It is still going well and sounds great. All my hi-fi stuff is at my parents at the mo, but everyime I go to visit them and whack it on, it still sounds great.
I also got a Luxman CD player from them, that I’d never heard of before, but What Hi-Fi reckoned was a bargain and had given it 4/5. I also got that 1/2 price for £100.
Finally I ended up with some TDL RTLII floor standers which were also half price down to £150.

At the end of the day it’s about what sounds good to you as already said and it’s important to have a good listen. I took my dad to a Richer Sounds to replace his amp and we had a listen to a Marantz amp that was meant to be the dogs danglies and a Cambridge Audio amp that I had never seen tested anywhere. Well, the Marantz sounded like someone had placed a thick pair of curtains over the speakers. Utter cak, whereas the Cambridge Audio just sounded right.
As for cables and stuff, don’t get too hung up on it. Get some speaker cable for £2-3/m and you won’t go far wrong. Cable Talk was the stuff when I was buying, and I don’t know why/how or whatever, but bi-wiring really does seem to help. It made a large difference to the clarity coming out of my speakers. £10-20 on an interconnect will see you right, and you can always get a better one when you are feeling a bit more flush.

As for Bose/B&O and all that – I think they look great, but they seem really overpriced and don’t seem to deliver in the sound stakes. I guess it’s a toss up between style and sound to some extent. Oh and yes, every Bose shop i have ever been into has been snobby beyond belief.

Acoustic Energy Aego M are awesome little PC speakers. Not hifi but really well made and will blow away anything else comparably priced out there. I got mine really cheap on ebay (£85), but it seems like the price has gone up £20 only recently. Still worth the money.

http://www.acoustic-energy.co.uk/Product_range/Aego_series/Aego_M.asp

http://www.google.co.uk/products?hl=en&q=aego%20m&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wf

I got my 1st system from Richer Sounds in ’91. All discounted well reviewed old models such as JPW Sonatas. Service was never great really as just a small shop piled high with kit and not possible to get a proper demo. In later years they bought brands such as Gale so a lot of their stuff is manufactured by themselves.

I’ve not read the whole thread but my views (from being “into” hi fi, having designed speakers for a living and also worked in retail” are as follows:

To say that there’s no point in spending more than £200 on any one component is silly. It may be the case in a particular system or where set up is comproimised – but with everything this is a sliding scale.

I wouldn’t buy anything NEW without listening to it with your amp and ideally source. If you CBA researching there are alot of sh bargins on ebay if you want to risk something.

I have heard decent cable make a huge difference – but moreso on better systems.

Yep cynic-al, cables do make a significant difference. QED Genesis siver spiral was awesome in my system when I got a pair on load from Audi-T, but i couldn’t afford, or justify £600 for two 3m bi-wire cables! I was talked into trying them and it was a transformation that opened everything up. I was a big cynic about cabling until then and thought people were talking a load of mumbo jumbo – snake oil type stuff.

To say that there’s no point in spending more than £200 on any one component is silly.

I think, generally, that there isn’t any ‘real’ need to spend more than that, in yer average home. Spending loads more isn’t really going to ‘improve’ your enjoyment of music by any quantifiable amount. Are you listening to the music, or the ‘sound’?

Rich has a finite amount to spend. He knows he’s not going to be able to afford the best in H-Fi gear; he just wants something fairly decent to listen to choons on. For his purposes, I’d say there isn’t really a great need to spend more than £200 per bit.

I mean, let’s be realistic; most of us are more than happy with more ‘budget’ equipment.

I’ve owned Mordaunt-Short for years. Had the Ms25’s and some MS10’s then I heard they went bust/bought out? Now I have some 902’s- nothing special to some gear queers on here but seriously how GOOD are your ears? 🙄

molgrips… sorry, but do you understand this? If so, where does this notch come from? Certainly not from an RC network!

Just for reference, the 1/RC frequency is in radians per second, you’ll need to add a 2*pi in there somewhere to get a result in Hz! Also, this frequency is called the cutoff frequency, breakpoint, or 3db point.

One other thing, the larger the R and C, the lower the cutoff frerquency…

Spongebob… it still is all snake oil and mumbo-jumbo, you’ve just been sucked in!

Good grief, you will not get a audio band resonace from a hi-fi cable!.

This is not to say they don’t have any effect. Cables have an impedance (product of resistance, capacitance and inductance) that varies with frequency. However, the issue (if there is one) is not to do with forming a filter, but with impedance matching.

Connected devices passing a signal should be closely impedance matched to avoid ringing (perhaps this is what you mean about resonance?) and cables can affect this. However, which cable is best for your system depends entirely on what your system comprises of. There is no one ‘best cable’.

I mean, let’s be realistic; most of us are more than happy with more ‘budget’ equipment.

Nope. After a while with my 1st system I decided the sound was a bit thin. My 2nd system with Arcam CD and Audiolab amp – £450 components – was good but when I started listening to Naim I knew I had to give into their green glow…. At new my CD was about £900, pre/power amp and external power supply about £2k and Kef 104/2 speakers were close to £2k back in the 80s; all bought 2nd hand. Apart from a more realistic sound the great thing is the closer to live sound I get in a kinda bowel slamming sense if I turn it up a notch – great for AC/DC!

I’ve got a few spare runs of Naim NACA5 cable going for free if you want them Rich. Not far away from you in Southampton

I bought my first “real” Hi-Fi from RicherSounds.

They offer good prices, half decent equipment. A real good base to build a nice system from.

You need to have an ear for sound to notice the difference between hi quality systems and cheaper ones… Some of my friends can tell the difference, other’s are like “I can’t hear any difference”

But most importantly its only worth the money, if you think it is! 😉

Spending loads more isn’t really going to ‘improve’ your enjoyment of music by any quantifiable amount.

Speak for yourself. It improves my enjoyment. Might as well ask why a nice car is any better than a crap one – after all, the roads are the same. Does driving a Lotus allow you to enjoy driving more? Hell yes!

With respect the filtering effect of cables – I am not an audio engineer, and a factor of 2pi could indeed be missing from my calculations. The physics was a long time ago and my putative theory was just that.

However, The cheaper interconnects did indeed appear lose higher frequencies despite having lower capacitance and resistance. So this is in effect a filter, no? I am not talking about horrible audio artefacts or some kind of nastiness – just a sublte impression. And I had no spectrograph to hand 🙂

I’ve got a few spare runs of Naim NACA5 cable going for free

That’s pretty generous – costs over £10squid a metre and very easy to sell on Ebay.

If you can try and listen to whatever you buy. At the end of the day it’s your ears and not some reviewers that will listen to your music. Some brands have a particular sound, NAIM for one. Anyone interested in good hi-end stuff should always check out the second-hand market as you really can pick up some absolute bargains. I use a Linn Karik 3 CD player and Numerik DAC that I bought from a shop, with guarantee for under £600 for both. The Karik 3 alone new was nearly £2,000 never mind the cost of the DAC.

For what its worth mentioning,

If you’ve ever heard Gallo speakers, I know just the man should you wish for a set, naturally, STW’ers get fantastic pricing.

Please dont think as this as advertising, i’m not! just offering the service to STW people on Gallo speakers.

If this is of course, considered as advertising, please feel free to delete my post!

cheers,
Jonathan

I have a decent separates stereo and use the compute wired into it as one source. The 2.5 mm output jack from the soundcard into the amp. Is it worth upgrading the soundcard? Does the quality of the CD drive in the ‘puter matter? Is it best to use a digital output from the ‘puter and a separate DAC?

TJ – if you’re running low quality MP3s then is ain’t gonna matter what tweaking you do – the quality of the source material is going to be poor and the major factor. If you’re using the CD drive on the laptop as a source then an optical output on your soundcard and a decent DAC would be a good starting point. Though you are getting to the point of it being cheaper/more convenient to just buy a decent CD player for your stereo.

If you’re feeding the amp lossless music files from the harddrive then the optical/dac would make sense too.

RudeBoy – Member

TJ; my Mac has a dijical optical output, and I understand you can connect a DAC to this, for the best sound quality from a dijical file. Obviously, AIFF is going to sound a bit better than squashed MP3. You can get a soundcard with optical outputs that will slot into your PC.

Personally would connect up a good quality USB external “soundcard” with the required line ins and outs rather than rely on the connection through a 3.5mm jack socket (even if it is a digital one). That’s what I do for music production and recording on my Mac anyway!

I’d say it’s worth concentrating more on speakers as they affect the total sound much more than the source does. In this day and age, with digital reproduction of course.

Couldn’t agree more. The “average” person is quite happy listening to MP3’s compressed at 128kbps for crying out loud, but for those who can “tell” the difference, audio compression makes the world of difference. Even between a 128kbps MP3 and a 320kbps MP3 there’s a massive difference, beyond what the “average” person can tell, so for most the law of diminishing returns has already come into play and so they won’t need or want to play their music in any better format than a low quality MP3.

Now, as the true Hifi buffs will know, and sorry to shatter the illusion for the rest of you, CD’s are NOT true “High Fidelity” audio sources. They are VERY heavily compressed still. They are recorded at 44.1KHz sampling rate, at in 16 bit stereo. What does this mean? Well when compared to the likes of DVD Audio, or SACD’s, or any audio source recorded on a computer at the highest quality possible (any advances on 192KHz and 24 bit?), or even good old vinyl, the CD does not provide a fully “High Fidelity” experience.

The problem with all the other sources (apart from vinyl which of course wears out!) is simply storage! The CD was launched as a format as at the time about 700Mb was about the best they could fit onto a single disc. It just so happened that this was enough to get up to 80 minutes of audio onto that disc at the specified quality. A few years later DVD’s come along, with 4.7GB of storage, but for 99.99999% of the population, the quality of the audio experience from a CD is good enough (as a 128kbps MP3 is for probably 95% of the population, and a 320kbps for 99% say). They did mess about with DVD audio and SACD, but just about nobody bought it!

In summary, yes by all means blow your wad on an expensive CD player, but as stated before, you will notice far more bang for your buck spending the money on the speakers, and the amp, than on the player, as it’s the source material (the CD) that’s limiting the quality of the “Hifi” experience more than anything.

To say that there’s no point in spending more than £200 on any one component is silly. It may be the case in a particular system or where set up is comproimised – but with everything this is a sliding scale.

Again, couldn’t agree more. If you have an enormous listening room, and loads of cash to burn, blow £30k on a Hifi by all means, it will be amazing! But I think the point that was being made by others was that any more than about £200 is probably where the diminishing returns really start to get noticed by most people.

Anyway… All Hifi equipment does is “colour” the sound in one way or another. You need true reference level monitors and equipment to join the ranks of the real geeks! 😉

On a related note what is the best way to use your computer as the sound source?

Don’t play MP3’s, WMA’s or the like. Rip your music to the computer’s hard drive as WAV’s or AIFF’s.

Get yourself a decent external USB or Firewire powered “Soundcard” from the likes of some of these on this list. Obviously you spend £30 on one, it’s going to be nowhere near as good as a £300 one! Take into account that mostly they’re designed for Audio recording and production, rather than just playback though, so you won’t need one with many of the features that some of them have. Just a set of Phono outputs (and inputs if you want to record too) is about all you need.

Depends on the computer, but certainly I wouldn’t worry too much about upgrading the CD unit on the computer. All it’s doing is reading digital files from the CD anyway, it’s everything after this that will make the difference in quality.