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Hi,
Time for some hifi related advice. My cd player has packed in, (was plugged into a separates amp). Amp still fine, speakers good too. (Amp Kenwood, speakers Mission, both 10 + years old). Also have a tv with a Yamaha 'sound bar', blue ray player and Apple TV, in the same room. Soundbar is good, but hardly as good as a separate hifi amp for music, and works best with the tv switched on.
Have a small town house with two main living floors, 2nd floor is my Apple Mac Mini, connected to an old cheaper surround sound system. We have a collection of cds that all sit on the 2nd floor now, due to space. I also keep the majority of my music on the ipod/mac mini.
Now it is great to stream music to this thing or that, but I kind of feel it is a waste not to make use of my CDs (and the Mrs is Rubbish on her ipad/my ipod when it comes to playing music remotely).
Am I best to:
- join the 20th century, plug in an Apple Airport express to the amp and be done with it
- get a cd player that can also have an ipod plugged in
- ditch the amp altogether, get a small hifi with/without a cd, that also connects to ipod etc
Price between the above options is not massively far apart (probably sub £100), but 1st option means I can't play CDs at all apart from the rubbish cd player we have on the 2nd floor. Some fancy stereos these days also do away with the cd altogether.
Hardly an end of the world type drama, but any advice always much appreciated.
Does the blu-ray player have analogue audio outs?
Do Blu Ray players play CDs? I am pretty sure my normal DVD player does?
If the Blu-Ray has analogue audio outs, could you plug it into the amp and use it as the CD player?
I assume doing this would allow the full blu-ray signal (audio & visual) to still go to your TV via the HDMI? Or you could turn the Soundbar/TV down and have the sound for films coming through the stereo?
I am the geek, not suggesting anyone else is...
Cooper's 3rd Law of STW: No matter what the subject, there is someone on STW more geekier about it that you are.
Stumpy, definitely possible to use blue ray for cds too. Hi fi does not sit next to tv due to a lack of flexibility in the layout, which means I can not get the sound from blue ray to the amp at the moment.
I use the soundbar for films as it processes surround signals, not just stereo. Sound is good for films, not horrendous for music, but not amazing.
Does your amp have digital inputs? If so you could run a digital coax from your BR player to your amp. Being digital you will get no degradation of sound quality due to length of cable run. Alternatively you could buy a cheap CD player with digital outputs and position it close to your amp.
Apple AE will need a separate DAC/digital amp to sound decent, as the onboard DAC isn't great. It has optical digital output (3.5 mm jack) for this purpose.
And rip everything lossless, if you're streaming from a computer. MP3 (192kbps minimum) will sound ok on a basic set-up though.
I don't have any digital inputs on the amp, due to its age.
My music is stored in 128knps quality I think - didn't have much space but a lot of cds to load onto my laptop when putting all music into itunes.
Are airport expresses reliable? Do you just control them using an ipod/pad/phone with the remote app?
Airport express accesses your I tunes content and distributes it via your wireless network (or network cables) via airport express routers. These are about £80 each and you connect via a 3.5mm jack plug or a network cable. Not the most cost effective method but does work. And cause it works off iTunes you can control via your iPod/iPad/iPhone. It is the predecessor to AirPlay but AirPlay is built into the device rather than being a separate device.
I'm sure there is probably a Bluetooth device that could zap music across your room.
Thanks Wobbliscott.
Airport express probably seems the easiest way to go, perhaps it is time to stick the CD in boxes until I have a home with more space, whenever that may be.
Seems mad to go and buy an airplay enabled device when I have a decent amp and speakers that still work, although it does make me look like a bit 80s.
You can't beat seperates. Far superior. I feel we've taken a step back in sound quality with all this MP3. I stick with CD's wherever possible, and if I rip into iTunes its at Apple Lossless, so CD quality when I play through my mian seperates system at home. I only rip down to 256kbps when syncing with an iPod/iPhone as when you're listening through ear buds you're not getting the impact of the quality of Apple Lossless, so better off ripping down to save memory. The good thing about iTunes is you can store your music at Apple Lossless and rip it down on the fly when you sync with your mobile device (i'm sure other non-Apple music databases probably do this so as not to create another Apple vs. the rest of the world debate).
I now have a mac mini with much more hard drive space at circa 500GB. I know not huge, but compares well to my previous 128GB lap top. I think the only thing preventing me re-ripping it all is the circa 35GB of music I currently have, which means I would be needing a bit more time to rip it all in lossless format I am guessing.
Still, might be worth it long term to have better quality tunes. CDs seem easier to achieve good quality though. If going digital with an airport express, is it better to go for a separate DAC or just get an amp with digital input?
The onboard DAC in an AE isn't great. It's a bit like how earphones with MP3 players are generally a bit crap. If you are going to play through a decent amp, then get a separate DAC.
Airport express DAC is far better than an iphone DAC - I'd try the airport express analogue output first.
It would be worth trying Itunes match for a while (it lets you download 320kbps versions of everything you currently have) to see if you can discern any difference
Harman Kardon bluetooth receiver and a new CD player, both connected to your existing amp and speakers???
Stick with your separates and CDs, there isn't room for my separates at my GFs house and I miss them every time I play music. Once they're gone you've got to get the new ones past the missus.#Youdontknowwhatyouvelosttilitsgone
It's not a cheap option but you could consider the Marantz m-CR603?
[url= http://www.whathifi.com/review/m-cr603 ]What Hi-Fi review[/url]
I've got the CR602 bi-wired into a pair of old Missions and it sounds great. The CR603 has an optional Airplay adaptor and can play internet radio etc if you can connect it to a network cable...
Being digital you will get no degradation of sound quality due to length of cable run.
obviously wrong because the cable length does matter, too long a cable needs a repeater, etc.
Note that CDs do actually have a life, so it might be best to bite the bullet and rip them all and be done with it, preferably to Flac.
Also note that if you hook your bluray up to the hifi and want the hifi to handle the sound for movies, then taking the analogue output from the bluray player might end up giving you lipsync problems. In this case a quick fix is to take the analogue/ or digital, output from the TV once it has received the signal over the hdmi cable from the bluray player.
If there is a big mismatch between the blurays output resolution and the tvs you might still end up with some sort of lipsync error, as this error is often down to the time delays imposed by rescaling.
Airport express DAC is far better than an iphone DAC - I'd try the airport express analogue output first.
I've done a basic comparison using an AE with and without a separate DAC, and the difference (on a decent separates set up) is obvious. The AE analogue output is ok if using small amplified speakers in a kitchen for example, but if you want the best from the system, go with a DAC.
Most Airplay speakers are crap compared to a decent amp, DAC and speaker set up using an AE to do the streaming duties. Look at the AE as a signal streamer rather than a standalone remote player.
Gosh I'm late to this one 😉
CD have a life? Only CDRs with poor backing over the foil I think 😉
Right, as to the original question: [url= http://www.whathifi.com/Review/Slim-Devices-Squeezebox-3/ ]Squeezebox[/url] and re-rip as FLAC or something. Don't mess around 🙂
The advantage with a laptop is you don't need to worry much about leaving it on to serve music because it's power consumption is relatively low. My PC OTOH is 4-600W, and now is full of 2TB of music and Vids. Hmmmpf.
+1 on the Marantz m-CR603
works well with airplay and mac and TV and internet radio and plays CDs etc etc
Squeezebox is outdated now though, isn't it? I know they've stopped the range, anyway.
That said, I really like mine, also use its BBC app for listening to the radio, and the DI app for dance music broadcasts
CD have a life? Only CDRs with poor backing over the foil I think
Cd's have a life of about 30 years but when the inks in the label are applied this can drop to about 10 years.
I have some old CDs of about that age which show errors, and some other which have lots of small holes in.
And a PC doesn't have to have a power supply that big, some of the smaller quiet PCs have smaller PSUs, I think mine is 240W. Plus mine is quiet whereas a laptop may not be quiet all the time.
Slim Devices' gear just sounds lovely, I don't know if it's outdated, sorry.
Your PC probably does use less power, but then again you don't likely run a 40% overclock on a chip with a TDP of 120W at stock, 4 Physical discs and a big graphics card. Having said that My 470 GTX has cooked itself to death and I'm now on a 70W Fire Pro, so I guess I'm down about 150W on max power usage.
CDRs with no paint over the foil degrade very quick, especially if you live by the sea [as I used to]. Ones with thick paint seem to survive longer.
Anyway - OP - check the Slim stuff out, they do sound magical and are pretty capable.
you don't likely run a 40% overclock on a chip with a TDP of 120W at stock, 4 Physical discs and a big graphics card
does that make it sound better ?? 🙂
My statements about CD life were based on some research my mate did when he worked at CERL in Leatherhead on whether they were safe to use for archiving.
No, but when Transcoding/Rendering/Generating Video from 3D files/working in Solid Edge/Autodesk Alias it all helps.
For example, I ripped about 100 DVDs last week, saved me around 20 hours waiting, in total.
Oh, and gaming, when I get another Gaming Card, it can help a lot depending on the game.
mines dedicated to the playing sounds, got a more powerful laptop for the other stuff.
If all your music is at 128Kb, iTunes Match will uprate it to 256Kb, which is obviously better, but spending some time re-ripping to 320Kb is a better compromise; it'll rip pretty quickly, up to 19x on the external drive I got attached to my Mini, and it's highly unlikely you'll ever notice any difference between 320 and lossless, I know I can't hear any significant differences between the ones I have in my iTunes when played over my audio system and on my iPods.
Cambridge do a BluRay player that'll play CD's to a very high standard, and is highly regarded, if you want one player that'll do it all. I'd go for an Apple AE plugged into the amp, to stream from iTunes, the BluRay to play your CD's, (which I still do, from a Cambridge DVD99 player), and maybe consider upgrading your amp to a new Yamaha AV amp, or maybe the Onkyo one, either around £500, with many inputs, fantastic sound, and the ability to use optical inputs, which is how my Mini is set up; optical into my old (15 years or so) Yamaha, and HDMI into my telly.
With Apple AE's dotted around the house, you can buy pairs of active speakers, when you can afford them, and build a system into every room over time.
Oh, and get a bigger external drive, maybe two or three Tb, and stick your music library on that, it'll give you much more headroom on your storage for future music buying; 500Gb isn't a huge amount, really.
My Mini has a second 750Gb drive in the optical bay, but it also has a lot of photos on it, too, so I'm adding a large external for media storage.
Many options available, that's for sure. 😀