So you're happy with your kit....

I like my system but I doubt the urge to tease a bit more detail will go away soon.

Like some one said a lottery win would be useful.....

resulting in

.....hotted up valvs for amp

....better valve amp?

....hotter cdplayer....with all the ones coming on the market...

....the time to devote to a speaker build (cheers pete)


I have no interest in goig down the convenience /squeeze box route.

For me putting a cd in the payer is not stressful!

The sonics are most important to me.

 

this is getting somewhat circular, but there is no reason why network based audio should be sonically inferior.

In fact furthermore, it is my opinion that for any given budget a simple squeezebox solution with greater proportions of a budget spent on loudspeakers and amplifiers will result in much better bang for buck - even with a substantial budget.

I'm echoing the sentiment with action - when I move home I will have something in the region of £10,000 of amplification and speakers being fed by a £150 squeezebox. I humbly suggest it will sound great

 

so are we saying that buying a cd player at say £2000 would have no sonic advantage over the £150 squeeze box?

not in dynamics or soundstaging etc ?

 

Perhaps but the amps and especially the speakers will have more effect on the sound.

 

Sure, but may also better reveal shortcomings further up, necessitating an upgrade there, too. Depends on the amp and speakers, of course.

 

I think the speakers have the most effect. Amps are quite similar when you find the good ones.

 

well there we are then ...amp and speakers first

not sure as I agree though

the change froma marntz 5004 to a modded arcam A5 was not inconsiderable (cheers Pete )

 

Sorry to differ but I would not bother routing the sound of a stand alone SB through £1000 of electronics - let alone £10K.

 

Interesting....

whats your approach to squeeze boxes, Mike?

 

Apple.

Into a decent multibit dac.

 

thats told me!

 

ripit,
the sonos is certainly an alternative to the squeezebox however from what i understand you are locked into certain things (don;t they also contain amplification as well). the squeezebox however is open source which means that it's constantly evolving and if you don;t like the way it does something either someone has fixed it or you have the opportunity to fix it yourself.
i've no idea about the sound quality of the sonos but i'm sure it's very good.

mike,
you do realise of course all the rfi grunge being pumped into your dac from your grapefruit is absolutely murdering the sound - unless you are using an optical connection in which case THAT is murdering the sound. - seriously though whatever floats your boat - i'm not in the position at present to have much more than a half decent 'mini' system which to my ears still sounds fine.

anyway - just playing the what if game for a sec mike, what WOULD entice you to buy a piece of dedicated network audio kit? i take it the linn ds - hasn;t tempted you (have you heard it? any opinions?)

 

I would struggle to suggest to anyone a standard SB is the equal of a well sorted £1000 CDP. It needs modifiying, IE a Linear PSU, internal re-clock and good external DAC. Then you would be in the right ball park.

For those that do not like the SB interface, you can still control it via a laptop using the Sqeezecentre interface or you can go the new SB duet route.

http://www.slimdevices.com/

The Sonos system is really good, good sound, good interface and flexible. You don't have to purchase the ZP100 amplifier modules. The only downside I would say is the controller is a bit 'clunky', if it where designed around a Nintendo DS with touch screen I think it would be even better...

 

Rob, thinking about going wireless for playing stuff off the internet. What does NAS stand for? And is an ipod required to make it all work? What about appox costs (not including macbook)? Cheers.

 

I'm sure Rob will be along in a minute, until then....

1) NAS is Network Attached Storage - essentally a box with hard disks in, which can be accessed over a LAN. Just means the songs are stored in one place and can be accessed by multiple devices/ computers. You don't have to do this but its nice. You can use your desktop for example to store your music and still stream it to another room where your Hifi is.

2) an ipod is not required. Rob uses the Ipod touch as a remote control to select the songs, look a album art etc

What you will need is basically:

1) Somewhere to store the music. This can be a PC or MAc or NAS or IPOD

2) Method to send music from storage to hifi
This can be wired or wireless
You can send digital signals and use the DAC in your hifi or send converted(analogue) signals straight to pre-amp. You would then need a DAC inthe PC/Apple where the music is stored to do the conversion

3) You need a user interface to browse and select the music you want played. If using a MAc or PC you can do this sitting at the screen. Or you can have the more elegant solution that Rob has using his Itouch as a remote. Or you can use products such as the SB

Costs will vary depedning on the choices you make

 

Nice one Kmac

Cheapest solution for me right now would be to keep using my desktop PC, where there's already a decent internal soundcard and a lot of music stored. When wiring the soundcard up to my preamp/hifi, I've had some hum/noise issues. This only goes fully away when I literally unplug the wire (turning the PC off isn't enough). Hence my interest in trying out wireless. The obvious solution is the Slimdevices one, or similar. I assume you cannot use Airport Express with a windows desktop PC?

May be tempted into getting a Macbook or Mini, however.

 

The Airpot Extreme and the Airport Express are just wireless routers produced by Apple. The former lets you have more users on a network. You can use them with a PC but have no personal experience of doing so.

You don't have to get Apple stuff. The one advantage of using it is if you use ITunes as the digital rights management of songs purchaed from itunes means you can only stream using Airport.

 

I do you use i-tunes to play music files (mainly wav from recorded vinyl and mp3 from the internet) but I have no interest in buying music from their store.

 

In that case you do not need to be tied to buying any apple kit - songs not bought from itunes will work with any vendors kit.

Not saying their kit is bad mind you - I have a Mac Mini myself and it is super silent ( if you really work the CPU hard the CPU fan kicks in but you really have to load the CPU).

They also appear to have recently dropped their prices (well since I bought my Mac anyway)

itunes bought songs don't work with Squeezebox ( at least they didn't use to - unless they've sorted the Digital Rights issues but actually I think this is just a smokescreen to get people who use the Itunes store to buy Apple kit.

 

If you want to stream wirelessly to you Hifi you can do it for a touch over £200

1) Get a wireless router e.g. Netgear DG834GT £50-£60

2) Get a Squeezebix classic circa £160


Connect PC to wireless router using a cable but you can even connect wirelessly (you will need a cable connection to set up the router)

Then connect SB to Hifi. You can use the SB's own DAC which Rob was not very impressed with ( actually he used the SB+ which uses a different DAC altogether I believe) and connect using RCA out to your pre-amp or active speakers
OR
Use the digital out of the SB and connect to your own DAC

Connect the SB to your router wirelessly and away you go. Don't even need a soundcard in your PC. You will need to install Slim server software onto your PC (comes with the SB).

Above is just one (simple) example configuration of many but this is reasonably cheap