[Closed] House stereo

How much do you each want to spend? How much was the bike? (possibly a big range there, I know!)

How big's the room?

What do you want to play on it? spotify/streaming/internet radio, DAB radio, CD's, MP3s/similar through the laptop?

Want to put your movie audio through it too?

want to link it to other rooms, or happy with standlone?

Like to be under 500 if possible
Room is about 6 x 4 m
All of the above Will need to have a CD player we are a bit old fashioned that way
Mrs has a lot of music on her phone so usb or Bluetooth needed

look at the richer sounds clearance items and join the VIP club if there is anything near you as you get an extra 20% off.

How about a Sonos system and a Spotify Premium account?

You'll need broadband to stream your music of course but the library is vast so will probably have all/most of your old CDs.

That's what I did and haven't bought a CD or mp3 download in years.

You could do a lot worse than a Denon M39 and some Monitor Audio BX2s

Edit: they've both been superceded!

http://www.richersounds.com/package/system-savers/mini-hi-fi-system-deals/pah012732

Or

http://www.richersounds.com/package/system-savers/mini-hi-fi-system-deals/pah012842

I've just clicked the buy button on a new bike so not really in any position to say no.

Weird logic. "We have to buy something expensive because we've just bought something else expensive." Mate of mine used to do that, his wife would buy some shoes or something and he'd go "that's great, it means I can buy a new Playstation game," never quite understood how that worked.

"You'll need broadband "

yeah i fell down at that hurdle so bought a denon m39 and a set of dali zensors.....

does what i need it to do - odd CD, lots of radio and has a usb input.

Speakers took a while to bed and i thought they were crap and tinny compared to my ebay special mission mx1s in the garage in though sound sweet now

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I would imgine the OP will be spending quite some time trying to find something for his quoted budget of £500 there Woppster! 🙂

Plus, spending that sort of money I would imagine he would like it to sound good as well. While I know you are somewhat partial to Naim, I personally have yet to hear anything by them that sounds remotely worth the money.

OP - what sort of music do you listen to and how loud do you like to listen? Is the quality of the sound something that is important to you or is it just a matter of being able to hear the music?

Naim, I personally have yet to hear anything by them that sounds remotely worth the money.

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Actually, while we're on it and apologies for the slight thread hijack (though this may also be of use), what is the best option right now to replace our old Squeezebox Duet - it needs to essentially be a streaming box that will connect to the AV receiver so as to:

a) play our full music library from the NAS drive (a good, fast interface is crucial on this bit as we have a [i]lot[/i] of music);
b) stream from Spotify;
c) do regular iplayer type stuff, i.e. play live radio and catch-up shows;
d) er... that's it.

There's so much on the market right now it's impossible to tell what will do the above easily and conveniently, at high quality and with a good interface.

Nice try Woppster - I think you must have borrowed that picture from the engineers. Whatever you personally might think, my experience wth them is that they are vastly overpriced and overrated. Case in point, the Bristol Show last year the demo kit on the Naim stand was pretty poor from a sound qulity perspective - you couldn't have paid me take anything from there! I know, shocking isn't it - people are different. 🙂

From your passion for the company one would you think you worked for them....

I have a Denon M40 that's linked too above (but I run a pair of bookcase Missions with. DAB radio and cd. Works for me.

I've a sonos set up that i keep meaning to set back up (when I moved house it took 6 weeks to get broadband sorted out and enjoyed having to dig out cds again for a change. I'll get round to it sometime, I'm sure 😳

shocking isn't it - people are different.

Utter bstards.

a) play our full music library from the NAS drive (a good, fast interface is crucial on this bit as we have a lot of music);

Have I missed something here? Streaming a music track will require the same bandwidth and thus the same "interface speed" regardless of whether you have one song on there or a Yottabyte's worth (unless you're planning on playing them all at once).

Cougar, yes sorry, may not have been clear - you're right that it makes no difference to the playing part. I'm talking about the speed and ease of scrolling through the library - on the squeezebox (including the phone app) you can whizz through the list either browsing or going straight to what you're after.

On a lot of simple interfaces (e.g. PS3, Revo Superconnect), although technically you can scroll through the list, in reality getting to C, D or even further literally takes minutes. It may be that everything available these days doesn't have an issue with that, but for obvious reasons before I bought a system I want to be sure!

Why are you looking to replace the Duet? I regret selling my Squeezebox kit - I've failed to find anything that's a real replacement other than Sonos. I don't want to buy all these speakers and the Sonos standalone player is ridiculously overpriced.

If you're not using it already the iPeng app http://penguinlovesmusic.de was a worthwhile improvement on the standard

Logitech app .

I know what you mean, and that is what I'm thinking too - the main reasons are that it's not really properly supported anymore, at least as far as I know, so the iplayer app and catch-up parts of it don't work anymore, plus the only way to get Spotify working on it is a work-around that every now and again stops working! It's fine, and I really like the hardware, but I have been wondering if there's something better and simpler I could switch to.

http://www.richersounds.com/showclearanceproduct/MARA-MCR611-BLK/Marantz+McR611+Blk.html

£304 after the 20% VIP discount so a nice budget left over for some speakers.

To the OP - if you decide to stick to an old-school separates setup you could do a lot worse than looking on Ebay for pickup only stuff in your local area (use the Ebay local deals tool on Moneysavingexpert.com). It can take a bit of searching through, but if you're patient there's often plenty of good kit to be had as people "upgrade" to all the fancy digital stuff being mentioned above - I picked up a decent NAD/Rotel combo last year for less than half your nominal budget.

I have a Yamaha R-N500 amp from Richer sounds which I can play vinyl, CD, cassette (yes someone still has them), internet radio and Spotify through. Q acoustics floors standers (from a mate). It works for me.

Naim, I personally have yet to hear anything by them that sounds remotely worth the money.

Fantastic business model they have then!

Naim eh? I did once hear a pair of quad amped DBLs which were quite nice. Of course at £12k they should have been. My much cheaper ATCs were better.

Fantastic business model they have then!

theflatboy - Have a look at an Auralic Aries mini?

Looks a little pricier than I was hoping, but interesting. I will investigate further, thanks.

I would imgine the OP will be spending quite some time trying to find something for his quoted budget of £500 there Woppster!

Might be doable 2nd hand with a 92/90 pre/power or a Nait 3 amp.

Depends on what sort of system you're after as well, ie a nice all in one like the ones from Samsung, Bose et al or separate amp and speakers to give better separation.

If the former then I would be looking at Bose or the Samsung tube variants that you can have on display in the living room and look quite nice.

Another option is to kill two birds with one stone and have a good surround sound and attach a streaming device to it.

[url= http://www.whathifi.com/news/yamaha-to-introduce-new-integrated-amps-and-more-ifa-2014 ]Yamaha AS501[/url] and [url= http://www.whathifi.com/dali/zensor-3/review ]Dali Zensor 3[/url] would be my choice, in fact it was last week.

Bang on £500 for both from RS. Look undecided and you'll get a discount of enough to cover the cost of a [url= http://www.whathifi.com/google/chromecast-audio/review ]chromecast audio[/url]. Hooked mine into the optical input and stream from the phone or chromebook - youtube, internet radio or downloads. Not tried from any NAS yet.

Naim, I personally have yet to hear anything by them that sounds remotely worth the money.

I've got a couple of Naim systems, neither of which was expensive and both of which sound nice. Currently spinning some Bill Evans via an ancient LP12 into an almost as ancient NAC32.5/SNAPS/NAP140 amps set-up and Naim Credo's (which aren't quite as old) and it sounds very lovely indeed.

I just got a Denon M40, Q Acoustics 3020 speakers and a Chromecast Audio to do the streaming. That will come in a long way under your budget.

Recently went for a Denon DM40 with Tannoy speakers from Richer Sounds and added a Chromecast audio to it.

It seems to cover most bases.

I'm sure you can go more advanced/state-of-the-art, but it does what I need (CDs, DAB, LAN and Internet streaming and Audio-out from TV) and does it well.

Hmm, do we need to add "Denon DM40 listening" to the list of Audi owning, IT working, etc etc list of STW characteristics?