iPod sound dreadful
AFAIK iPods have notoriously bad sounding headphone amps, worse than many other mp3 players.
I understand the pain that comes with having flat sounding speakers and listening to stuff that's badly produced or encoded. When I got my monitors I had to actually buy the cds as many of the mp3s I'd downloaded sounded so awful. I've noticed Amazon mp3 downloads being particularly crap. LAME MP3 at 320kbps sounds near enough the same as the original wavs to me though.
i would take a wide variety of music you enjoy. There's no point of demoing a system with music you won't listen to at home. You're wanting a bunch of electronics to play the music you enjoy on, not to make clear noises!
Also, I would ask for a home demo for a week.
As I'm also stuck in the 90's I'd say blue lines by Massive attack should have everything you need to test the mettle of a hifi system.
I do like to take the track "Superpreadtors" from the boxed set and see if it makes any of the components catch fire or melt too.
80's Nad amp, 70's Warfedale speakers, and a 2004 Zune sounds freaking great to me. - There is no susbtitute for cubic centimetres.
Hi, I don't know if you've already had this demo but a few here have touched upon the right way to choose demo tunes: Listen to your favourite cd's, the music you will listen to when you get it home.
Sounds obvious but what's the point in buying a hifi system because it sounds great with, I dunno, Kraftwerk if you only listen to, say, Slipknot?!!
I have a Rega Saturn feeding a Naim Nait 5i and I think it sounds great with everything, although the speakers (Jamo Concert 8's) make the system IMHO. Naim stuff is good but it's not the only brand out there!
Good luck!
Everything in its right place from the Radiohead album Kid A
that will tell you all you need to know.
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots parts 1 and 2 from the Flaming Lips album of the same name.
Donald Fagen The Nightfly is a stunningly well produced and recorded album. I've got a.special vinyl pressing from the Masterdisc masters that was pressed up for B&W after their boss heard it, and wanted it as a demo for retailers. I used to work Saturdays in a hifi shop. Still got my Logic DM101/Zeta/AudioTechnica MC turntable. Another good album would be Driftwood, by Eddie Reader. Listening to it at the moment, and there's an acoustic drum on the first track, Old Soul, that really moves air, fantastic recording. Paul Simon's Hearts and Bones is also a fabulous recording, and Peter Gabriel 4, in particular San Jacinto, can get the speaker cones moving around. Laurie Anderson's Mister Heartbreak is a lovely recording, one track, Gravity's Angel, has some low-frequency bass that is more felt than heard, just air pressure on your eardrums. My UE Studio monitors on my iPhone pick it up, but you need pretty good speakers to hear it. There's a passage on Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances that I used to use, that was really quiet, then a sudden crescendo would really make people jump, and was a good speaker/amp tester, lesser set-ups would have bass cones popping like mad.
The best Hifi I ever heard was at a place called Walrus in central london
Les at Walrus really knows his stuff and won't lead you wrong.
What Harbeths were they - I like the M30s quite a bit but you need the room, otherwise I am an LS3/5a fan, although a bit modded.
The room and placement of the speakers in the room makes a huge difference to the sound, which is why something that sounded good at the hifi shop might not necessarily sound good at home.
Of course if hi fi nerds had girlfriends they wouldn't be able to position their speaks optimally and the whole industry would be pointless.
I've never 'auditioned' high end stuff but when I was buying a small system for the lounge a year or two back was amazed by the difference a different set of speakers made - and it wasn't a day and night price difference either.
I just used stuff I normally listen to; some Pulp, some classical something acousticey, some Faithless.
Sadly since having it my girls have also decided they like music and I really should have had the foresight to audition it with the Lazytown soundtrack and Cheryl Cole.
BillMC is aurally challenged anyhow 
Binatone will suffice....
oliverd1981 - Member
Of course if hi fi nerds had girlfriends they wouldn't be able to position their speaks optimally and the whole industry would be pointless
Makes we want to cry, my lovely Naim set-up stuck in a corner of the living room behind a sofa. It's like keeping a lion in a cage. When the family are away I let it out and chuck in some gazelles.
My wife doesn't mind my (Naim) system and the rather dominant speakers (Kef 104/2s) in the sitting room so I'm pretty lucky but I think I may have to relocate them once my kid starts wondering about and fiddling with things.
You're right about Les at Walrus TG. Harbeths were the compact 7s, just astounding for their size. I regret selling my 3/5a's I had the matching AB1's too. Sold them to a chap in Oz for less than 3/5a's go for on their own these days :roll:. Using Audio Physics now.
I'd be really interested to hear about how you got on, BillMC. Let us know.
Went to Frank Harvey's in Coventry. Very low key salesman (Kevin) who gave good advice, just wired the gear in and disappeared to the back of the room. I ended up with a Uniti, £400 power cable thrown in plus Kef XQ20s and Naim cables. With stands it came to nearly as much as a good bike. And as Merlinman says, your hearing doesn't get better with age, so my view, like everything else, is to enjoy it while you've got it. Money well spent. What?
Sounds like a result to me. Just out of interest, what did you take to demo on it?
mudshark - Member
My wife doesn't mind my (Naim) system and the rather dominant speakers (Kef 104/2s) in the sitting room so I'm pretty lucky but I think I may have to relocate them once my kid starts wondering about and fiddling with things.
My Naim system has survived three kids. Obviously it depends on the child but mine were warned of touching anything at an early age. Since then there have been no problems. At least with Naim stuff the speakers are out of the way against the wall.
It seems that there are many people who prefer listening to 'sound' rather than 'music'
The problem with taking special music is that you are doing it to listen to the equipment. But that is not what music is about. It's exactly the same as obsessing over high-end bike components instead of enjoying riding.
So here is a really easy answer: take music that you will listen to when you get it home. Buy the kit that makes it sound best (to you). This will make you happy.
mudshark - Member
My wife doesn't mind my (Naim) system and the rather dominant speakers (Kef 104/2s) in the sitting room so I'm pretty lucky but I think I may have to relocate them once my kid starts wondering about and fiddling with things.
My B&W 705s have been damaged by my son 
He squashed the black cone in the middle of the mid/bass drive units and also crumpled the metal tweeters.
Still gets me down now when I look at them. Luckily you can still listen to them, although I am sure they would sound better if they were fixed. My youngest has just turned 3 and I will get them sorted in the next year or two as they should all be past the destructive stage.
The part of my hifi that amazes me in terms of indestructibility is my Micromega Stage 6 CD player. If you search on the internet you will read the reviews from annoyed Stage 6 owners whose CDs keep playing up, but mine has performed really well given the rough handling it gets nowadays.
Better yet, take along your wife or girlfriend (bit probably not both...) as women, being disinterested, hear the big picture rather than us guys obsessing on some aspect, like the bass.
I listened to Van Morrison,Beethoven's 9th, JS Bach, Rolling Stones,all made me feel very emotional
I bought my 72/140/CDi setup about 15 years ago and it still sounds wonderful - never felt the need to upgrade any of it, but it did get put away for a bit when the nippers were tiny.
I just tested it with well-recorded versions of stuff I like - at the time it was things like Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, Dido's Lament, David Sylvian, and Kind of Blue. Kind of Blue was a totemic recording for me - I was first inspired to get into hi-fi by hearing the album on decent kit and noticing subtleties I'd never known were there. Not sure I gained much by hearing them, but didn't want to miss them once I knew
Same here. I looked after a friend's house who had a 10 year old Naim set up. I heard stuff on my favourite CDs for the first time and listening on other equipment since then has been a frustrating experience.
Pah - Quad 909 monoblocks for me, and a Tact 2.2x pre-amp.
However I also have a Music First TVC pre-amp, which is obviously passive but the transformer gives it more kick than a resistive pre-amp.
It sounds great with loads of detail and transparency, but it also seems to make poor sources, like DAB radio, sound better. This is important as the goal is to listen to music, not hifi, and most of my music discovery comes from listening to DAB radio recordings from the early hours of the morning.
Do you like Huey Lewis and the News? Their early work was a little too new wave for my tastes, but when Sports came out in '83, I think they really came into their own, commercial and artistically. The whole album has a clear, crisp sound, and a new sheen of consummate professionalism that really gives the songs a big boost. He's been compared to Elvis Costello, but I think Huey has a far much more bitter, cynical sense of humour...In '87, Huey released this, "Fore," their most accomplished album. I think their undisputed masterpiece is "Hip to be Square", a song so catchy, most people probably don't listen to the lyrics. But they should, because it's not just about the pleasures of conformity, and the importance of trends, it's also a personal statement about the band itself.
What was the power cable? Power line? Powerigel?
I only went as far as a "Graham's Hydra" at £70 or thereabouts, but difference it made illustrates how important it is to build from the power source, I thought.
Naim power line cable, £420. That made it an even more attractive deal.
Cables DO make a very significant difference.
Yeah I'll bite. Cables make almost no difference at all if their electrical properties are similar. Any perceived benefits are 100% placebo.
In double blind tests NOBODY has ever been able to establish a success rate of anything other than what you'd expect from chance. I used to buy into cables until I tried tricky speaker cables on dem. Between a very well respected amp (Lavardin IT) and some eletrostatics (Martin Logan) a system easily capable of showing any change there was absolutely no difference between a 1k cable and the 2 quid a meter (because it looks nice and some is on show) stuff I now use.
Naim especially ought to be ashamed of themselves, they sell the fact that all of their gear benefits greatly from additional power supplies, the sheer neck of suggesting that the last three feet of mains coming into these supplies would make a difference is almost beyond belief.
Also the dealer gave you 420 quids worth of mains, no, the dealer gave you a 20 quid mains lead priced at 420 quid.
Also Russ Andrews the snake oil king has been forced to amend all his ads and descriptions to add in the phrase "in our opinion" because the ASA took him to task over his nonsense.
Love the Uniti, good choice..
Chris Rea's All Night Long from the 12CD box set Blue Guitars.
The intro to the longer Voodoo Chile track from Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland.
If the system handles the opening notes of those two at a significant volume then it is going to be ok.
15 years ago I lived in a flat and the mains electricity was a bit strange.
I remember buying an Arcam Alpha 9 amp, but I had to take it back because I could hear the washing machine through the speakers when the amp was on, so I bought an Audiolab 8000S amp and that was quieter.
After about a year I bought a Kimber 8TC power cable and that made a big difference.
My mate was a sparky and used to scoff at me, but I know what I heard.
A while ago I bought an ex-MOD power filter from fleabay. If there is ever a nuclear strike my hifi will be protected from any EMP that comes along the mains
Uniti is a lovely choice. And even better with a powerline, despite what other say it makes a difference, worth the money is another question all together!
BTW I have a Naim setup.
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