additional source equipment ...

Over past 18 months, I've been upgrading on the CD replay side, and buying more CDs to listen to. I've ended up with combo from AudioSynthesis: CD Transcend + Dax Decade. This plays into an AudioLab 8000S in its poweramp mode.

I am now considering sources other than CD:

a) a tuner, for that free music. could be FM analogue but must consider DAB - would Dax Decade help out here: feed digital from digital radio into Dax?
- what to buy: good mid-analogue tuner, older top-end analogue tuner?

b) moderate collection of vinyl LPs to consider
- buy a turntable (or re-furbish older Systemdek)?
- use a friend's to play and record onto CD?

c) moderate collection of cassettes, bought in pre-CD age when children threatened vinyl collection
- just been trying out older Denon cassette player - nice to discover old friends on cassettes, and sound OK but definitely not first water! Plenty of suggestions for Santa bringing me equivalents on CD!

d) internet downloads? not thought that one through yet ...

comments & suggestions pl

***

Other candidates for my well earned dosh are replacement speakers, with complementary (as in help the sound, tho free would be nice) 2 x 5m speaker cable run

 

I personaly would go for a turntbale. Why not refurbish your old Systemdeck?

You could also even buy a cheap Tuner and cassete deck.

 

Ron Smith Rules!!

You may wrish to go with the cheap tuner remembering that a cheap tuner will always sound cheap if used with a bit of damp string as an aerial. A cheap tuner with a good aerial may well no longer sound quite so cheap.

Aauric

 

thanks for the comments about tuners. Of course I have radios about the house, and the cable delivers the digital channels too. BUt I cant take listenning to the radio thru the telly, even if I do that via the AV stuff. Ialso have a receiver in the dining rom which is not bad.

As things stand I have a ReVox 261 on offer.. this was top end a while back, but should I shell out £300?

 

I have a moderate collection of vinyl (around 700) and to be honest the idea of getting them to disk would be very scarey, asking the favours of a mate even worse.

I got some tracks to disk off of three albums, seriously althogh the results were good it took around 5 hours to get it done.

 

Do not buy a DAB radio

The quality is worse than FM, the BBC multiplex bitrates are very low. Buy a freeview receiver, and listen to that instead.

DAB is shite.

 

So is the sound quality of freeview any better than DAB? Or is just that for the extra money you would shell out on DAB you can't notice the difference because of the high data compression rates?

I am still debating if a cheap £60 freeview box is worth buying or if I should just stick to analogue and good old NICAM.

 

for what its worth, on the AV front, I found that the initial switch to TeleWest cable was an improvement on both the A & the V of AV, and then the switch to TeleWest digital cable was a further improvement. So, I do get a wide range of radio stations delivered digitally into the house, at what compression rates I could not tell you, nor could I make comparison between cable vs free-to-air vs sat but perhaps could someone else provide that?

I could, and do, connect the cable signal to the AVamp, and hence AVset-up, but I locate my HiFi stuff on the other side of the room. There is to be an interconnect between AV/TV side of room and HiFi-sit-round-fireplace side, for 5.1 purposes (using HiFi L/R speakers and AV surrounds) and so I could use that as source for radio, but would require logistical action everytime I just wanted to switch on to switch off, so to speak.

So who has opinions on FM tuners then?

 

http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/intro_dab.htm

 

drats! someone, on someother forum, posted something about some American and several UK products that take digital radio from the Net and use wireless (and/or Ethernet) to connect to HiFi stuff - avoiding the oft crappy PC sound cards. anyone who sees the posting pl past the URL here.

Anyone else tried anythng like that?

 

Hi ditton,

I can't help you with your current quest but was wondering how you'd ended up with the AS transcend/DAX combo. AS gear is underrated IMO and it'd be nice to know what else you considered and rejected and what it is about the AS stuff that you like/dislike.

I'm considering the DAX as well and apart from hearing it at shows, I've had few dealings with the company and have yet to audition it in a critical environment so if you can compare/contrast your cd replay gear, it'd be much appreciated (by me at least ! )

thanks

reg