Replacing my ancient Hifi – er……helllp!

The amp, turntable and speakers have all died on my old 1980’s/early ’90’s hifi, so I’m looking for a new system. It’s been so many years since I took a serious interest in hifi/audio gear that I’m completely out of the loop with the latest gear. Can anyone on here offer me some sensible advice on choosing a system please?

Sadly, because of ongoing house renovations, my budget is limited to £1000 for amp, CD player, speakers, cables & stands.

The room that the system is going in measures about 15’x11′, and I do quite like to crank the volume up (main reason for buying a detached house!). The type of music that’s played is mainly punk, rock, metal and other ‘noisy stuff’.

My default was to look at Marantz stuff, ‘cos FWIR, for the money, it used to deal well with rock and heavy music genres. Also seem to recall NAD being a good option(?).

As far as speakers go, does the old adage that floor standers are better than bookshelf speakers on stands for bass-ey and ‘heavy’ music?

Any sensible advice & suggestions would be appreciated.

TIA

A mate recently put a system together that sounds bloody good for around half your budget. He did go 2nd hand route and bought NAD amp, NAD CD player and B&W speakers. He is a STWer so I will let him know and he can tell more.

Some things like mission speakers and Rotel amps never change.

I guess it’s about where and how you want your music around the house.

Sonos multiple room from richer sounds

A mate recently put a system together that sounds bloody good for around half your budget. He did go 2nd hand route and bought NAD amp, NAD CD player and B&W speakers. He is a STWer so I will let him know and he can tell more.

Cheers 🙂

I did a similar thing last year, bought a new set up. Decided CD’s are on their way out thus went streaming route.
Marantz do a well respected streamer and amp set up. Just add speakers of your choice.
eBay or ex demo will obviously get you more for your money. Enjoy

You can have my Wharfdale Diamond V speakers and Atacama speaker stands if you want (for cash, obviously!) C 1992 vintage but still working fine, as quality old hi-fi does.
Email in profile if you’re interested and I can send you pics.
If you’re anywhere near London I can drop them off. If not then please bear in mind postage costs won’t be cheap!

Rather than a CD player, get a DVD or BlueRay player. The Cambridge Audio ones are very highly regarded, and are inexpensive. Plus you get all the advantages of multiformat capability in one box. You might consider an A/V amp as well, something like the Onkyo TX-NR515, for around £275: http://www.superfi.co.uk/p-10102-onkyo-txnr515-networked-3d-ready-home-cinema-receiver-with-4k-upscaling.aspx?gclid=CKHVntLA17QCFSbMtAodDE8A1g
Just had a look for the CA DVD99, which was excellent, but they don’t seem to do disc players now, but I’m sure there must be equivalent players around.

Hey.

I use the following, and would say it’s eminently suitable for your tastes.

Cambridge Azur 540r V1 Amp (£80 secondhand) – Powerful, controlled and versatile
Sony DVP-NS900V – Plays CD’s brilliantly, also DVD’s and (if you see ’em) SACD’s – £140 secondhand
Rega Planar 3, RB300 arm, Ortofon M2 Red (a present, new to me, sound tuneful and cleaner than the Sansui they replaced)

Oops! Using mobile…

Acoustic Energy 109 – rebuilt with new surrounds on all cone drivers. 1m from rear wall, listening spot 30cm from opposite wall, lead filled, mounted on 20kg paving slabs with bluetac. Other slight tweaks, single wired (planning to build external xover and use all 6 channel s of the amp someday) – Very muscular, deep deep bass (yes I have known a REL, but this is damn close!), acceptable neutral mids, clean highs. Only sound coloured with female voice (most things do). Slightly peaky across the xover points. Sound great with rock, electronic etc, not quite so brill with classical, but 99% good enough! – £40 inc surounds (took ages to repair though)
Musical Fidelity X-LPS V3 phonostage – clean, clear and neutral. Rythmic and controlled.

Cable Talk 3 speaker wire

Monster interconnects 400 Mk2 – Likely crap but £5 a 1m pair in a closeout, solid and with good phono ends.

I listen to everything (really!), and it’s always good fun with this gear. As a bonus I hook up a projector and watch films on the gear too!

As an aside I have a Rotel RCD 965bx for sale (no remote). This basically sounds just as good as the Sony, the only reason I don’t use it is because it doesn’t play other formats. Both these transports are so good you will be hearing the limits of the discs. £40 plus postage or collect from Wellingborough or Kettering.

Sorry, I should make clear the prices are what I paid, and are given as a guide for those products. Only the Rotel 965 mentioned at the end is for sale.

Cheers for the feedback and info. Afraid I’m a bit out of touch when it comes to current tech (haven’t got an Ipod/MP3 player yet!), so streaming etc is a bit ‘Eh?!’.

Most of my music library is on Vinyl, CD and 😳 cassettes (the latter don’t get used much!). However, I now listen to loads of stuff online – Youtube & Napster. I used to play (or try to play!) drums, so enjoy watching & listening to some of the better drum covers that are on Youtube. I’d love to be able to either record or pipe (stream?) these Youtube covers through an amp & speakers – but dunno if this is possible(?).

I’m currently burning stuff to CD’s, but guess I could do with kicking myself into the modern age and get a second hand Ipod.

Speakers that I’m wondering about are floorstanding versions of Dali Zensor, Mission MX and Kef Q series – as I’m assuming that the floorstanders will be more suited to the music that I’ll be playing.

I’m quite intruiged by the idea of housing the hifi/music system kit in a cabinet under the TV – I guess this is where having a CD/DVD/Blu-ray player connected to an amp comes in? (as long as the wife & kids can connect their Wii and games to the TV, it’ll be fine 😉 )

If anyone can answer my random questions, or offer sensible advice, that’d be much appreciated.

Yours confusedly.

I’m watching this with interest. My Arcam and Quad kit is gathering dust upstairs in the spare room. I have a boxed LP12, which is never used (doesn’t belong to me, before you all ask for me to sell it..!). I have concluded the rest of it is going to be sold 🙁

Times have definitely changed and the thousand or so CDs we have are sitting, gathering dust – it’s all low-fi listening at home at the moment. I’m not sure I’m ready to give up on CDs just yet, but I am happy to embrace streaming.

I’d seriously consider that. and if you want lots of useful tips and pointers, get yourself over to pinkfishmedia[/url], where plenty there seem to have embraced it in all its forms.

We’re going to buy a new computer, and I intend to build out from there the ability to stream my content to a scaled down hi-fi/AV set-up in the sitting room.

Are you selling the Arcam/Quad kit?

Might be interested if so.

E-mail in profile, thanks.

As a very left field option I’d look at some Adam A5X active speakers at around £500 a pair + stands, these coupled with a simple low cost pre amp like a Rotel RC06 from ebay for around £200 and your choice of CD player. Prolly better than budget floorstanders & amp TBH. Active is a much better way of doing things IMHO however the WAF on Adam speakers is low. You’ll be able to connect 6 sources to the Rotel including a record player IIRC so with a few cables you’ll be all set.

iPod Touch + Spotify Premium + iPod dock(s).

Job done 🙂

Cheers for the pinkfishmedia link ourmaininthenorth.

Ah, someone else with an Arcam dust gatherer 🙂 My Arcam amp has been repaired a couple of times already, and now one of the speakers has packed up, it’s got the point that it’s cheaper to replace both.

We’re going to buy a new computer, and I intend to build out from there the ability to stream my content to a scaled down hi-fi/AV set-up in the sitting room.

That sounds an interesting option, I might look into that myself. Cheers.

Woah, I’m drawn like a moth to the Adam active speakers – I can see what you mean about the low WAF though. Another interesting option though, as I hadn’t thought of active & pre-amp. Hmmm…

We have no TV and instead an iMAC connected to a Marrantz amp and MS speakers – everything is streamed from Spotify / iPlayer / iTunes etc.

My default was to look at Marantz stuff, ‘cos FWIR, for the money, it used to deal well with rock and heavy music genres.

I would expect a Marantz CD player together with a Marantz amp to be somewhat “toppy”. I auditioned a ton of stuff when I set up my AV kit a few years ago and found that both Marantz and Technics gear gave a particularly bright sound; having them as both the source and amp stages was just too much and it sounded dreadful (to me).

I ended up with a Yamaha amp; it was relatively warm sounding, which (again IMHO) worked well when coupled up to a crisp source.

footflaps – do you use airport express or apple TV? I’ve read the latter sounds better.

Actives have a world of benefits over an amp and passive speakers, loads of headroom, uber dynamics etc etc. Bearing in mind the Adam home speakers are £££££ those studio ones are a bargain especially the 7’s. Those and a decent digital source is all I reckon most people would ever need.

Rusty – I’ll mail you.

footflaps – do you use airport express or apple TV? I’ve read the latter sounds better.

Neither, the Amp is connected direct to the iMac headphones socket, we just stream TV on the iMac and use that as the screen. You only need an Apple TV if you want to use a normal TV.

OK. Cheers.

Neither, the Amp is connected direct to the iMac headphones socket

not worried about sound quality then?

not worried about sound quality then?

It sounds superb as far as I’m concerned. From what I’ve seen of audio tests on Apple HW, their frequency response is very good.

2x Sonos S3 or S5 as a stereo pair and a Sonos Sub? Mate got that is its pretty good!

Rip CDs to FLAC, buy Sonos connect, an AV amp or stereo one with a decent digital connection, 2nd hand speakers and you’re done!

Right, at the risk of getting seriously flamed..

In my opinion (having studied a BSc in audio tech and acoustics) most domestic hifi is fundamentally flawed in that it utilises passive control of the speakers. For a huge amount of reasons that someone else can explain on the forum I’m about to mention I would seriously recommend looking at active speakers.

Take a look at the AVI forum and also their website. Their active speakers start at about £1k and need only a digital source to feed them ( which could be sonos, a DVD player or a cheap CD player). The digital source will ( despite an entire industry claiming otherwise) make no difference at all to the sound quality.

Anyway, check out the forum – Ash (one of AVI’s owners) often pops up to offer advice etc.

Active speakers are the way forward and have been used in studios for decades. It’s only recently that they’ve started to become “discovered” in a hifi world of snake oil and magazine reviews driven by selling advertising space.

If you have any specific queries feel free to drop me an email and I’ll bore you to tears about why active speakers are (in general) so good.

Thanks for all the feedback & suggestions. I’ve now had chance to do a little more research based on suggestions. WOW, there’s a whole new universe of tech out there that I didn’t realise (getting quite fired up with some of the potential options now 😀 )

Wireless tech – I’m just imagining filling the whole house with sound – blasting out ‘Change’ by Deftones (the wife’ll love it 😆 )

I can see I’m gonna have to sell a bike to fund this project!

.,..I’ve just realised others have mentioned actives too… Adam’s are supposed to be very good too..

Something else to throw into the mix: logitech’s squeezebox touch. If you can find one. I think they are now discontinued.

Cheers RopeyReignRider – I may well be in touch!

The active speakers really appeal, I just need to sell the idea to the OH – we share the same dodgy music taste, so she’s pretty cool about compromising on asthetics to get a better sound – however, she hates seeing cabling and speaker wires trailing about (trip hazards y’see 🙄 ) So, as long as I can get around that somehow, I’ve free reign.

Woah, I’m drawn like a moth to the Adam active speakers – I can see what you mean about the low WAF though. Another interesting option though, as I hadn’t thought of active & pre-amp. Hmmm…

If you want VFM this is the way to go by miles. Look at Dynaudio BM5A’s also. I’d pair the lot with a combined CDP/DAC/Pre. Done.

.. The AVI actives have a very high quality DAC built in by the way and have I think 2 digital inputs and either one or two analogue inputs I think..

The digital source will ( despite an entire industry claiming otherwise) make no difference at all to the sound quality.

Too sweeping a statement – some digital sources chuck out loads of jitter which affects the DAC, and there are not many totally jitter-immune DACs out there for reasonable money.

Most modern DAC’s have sufficient buffering to cope with jitter very well. There’s been some interesting studies on jitter of late – somewhere (I can’t remember where) on the AVI forum there’s a very good article on it and to what degree it can be detected.

To clarify I meant that the digital source doesn’t make a difference to most good DAC’s , specifically that used in the AVI’s.

When I was a test engineer at Arcam it was quite an eye opener – we hand tested the CD transports for jitter and they varied hugely yet were all deemed acceptable!

Diy your own cables. I did with this site and would recommend it.

I used this

.. Don’t get me started on cables 😀

My local dealer has a bunch of Arcam Solo Mini deals that would tempt me if I was looking for something. Don’t know if it lights your fire…
http://www.creative-audio.co.uk/