OT: compact home stereo things

secretsam

Hi there

Want to get a small stereo, up to say £500, must play CDs and have line in facility. I'm not an Apple-ist so IPod connectivity irrelevant. Sound quality more important than stupid features.

Ready, steady: Go!

asprilla

What's a CD?

hopkinb

Marantz MCR611 paired with Q Acoustics 2020i speakers? Comes in around £500 if you shop around?

Though the Marantz unit is streamer with the capability to play CDs. I have the older version, and am happy with it. I binned all my CDs a couple of years ago though.

bendertherobot

Sonos Play 5, Google Play music sub.

There you go

Tashman

Denon are always worth a look, mine's 12 years old now but still sounds great

hopkinb

bendertherobot wrote:

Sonos Play 5, Google Play music sub.

There you go

Sonos stuff is good. I have a few of the play 1s in the kid's rooms and my bedroom. I would quite like one of the soundbars, but can't persuade myself to part with the £600..

bendertherobot

hopkinb wrote:

bendertherobot wrote:

Sonos Play 5, Google Play music sub.

There you go

Sonos stuff is good. I have a few of the play 1s in the kid's rooms and my bedroom. I would quite like one of the soundbars, but can't persuade myself to part with the £600..

The 5 is outstanding and the Bar is, supposedly, even better. IF I get my bank charge refund my bit is going on that. The Mrs can have some shoes or something. Despite having probably 20k songs on my Mac I just use Google play music constantly now. £9.99 a month, not much it doesn't have and makes me discover new stuff constantly. And rediscover some old stuff.

hopkinb

I subscribe to spotify/soundcloud rather than google play, I'm sure they are similar. Hence chucking all my cds. Very cathartic.

UndercoverElephant

Doesn't have a CD player, but if it's anything like as good as its little brother the SuperSignal, then the Revo SuperSystem should be amazing!

Never heard the correct sound of an acoustic guitar recorded before. It's the percussion of the strum that's almost entirely missing.

essex-commuter

2 x Sonos 5's and a Sonos 1 with Spotify for me. Have a UEBoom2 bluetooth speaker for the garden which is great too.

Neither play CD's so don't read this post.

MrSweary

+1 for sonos. Have a Play 3 and Play 1. Great system, easy to use, sound is perfectly good for a 2 bed maisonette!

lastant

We're fully Sonos'd up too; Play 3 in the lounge and Play 1s in the kitchen and both bedrooms.

CDs/downloads from 'the past' are on a WD MyDrive in the hallway, and we've just subscribed to Spotify Premium (mainly as it allows us to download anything to our mobiles too) - not sure I'm totally comfortable with renting music for a monthly fee, but it's suiting us well since we've started doing it.

I think the Play 5 is the only one with a Line In, which'd let you then connect a CD player to it.

meanredspider

Yup - I'm another Sonos convert: 1, 5 and Soundbar - the latter two have line-in but, with music ripped to a computer or using a streaming service, you don't need CDs or line-in. Generally effortless.

I should add that I have an Arcam One which is a lovely bit of kit and plays CDs, line-in, TV and Digital Radio - and it just collects dust now we have the Sonos.

cjcp

Sonos (2 x P1) and Spotify, here.

But I do miss my Denon. Lovely bit of kit.

pblakeney

I had two set ups. 1. Old skool stereo. 2. Streaming with surround sound.
i have connected an old laptop to the old stereo. Pure bliss! :P

dhope

PBlakeney wrote:

I had two set ups. 1. Old skool stereo. 2. Streaming with surround sound.
i have connected an old laptop to the old stereo. Pure bliss! :P

With a DAC?

arthur_scrimshaw

I use a streamer (Cambridge Minx) most of the time now, CD's I put on a NAS drive as lossless copies and listen to Spotify a lot (family membership is £14.99 a month for up to 5 individual accounts) - for radio I stream from the internet, bit rates far higher than DAB (eg R3 is 192kbit/s on DAB vs 320kbit/s on streaming) also there are fantastic ad free stations like Radio Paradise. I've got a Linn/Naim system (albeit getting on a bit) as well but don't really use it much now.

tgotb

Cheap tablet attached to one of the kitchen cabinets with carpet tape, and a Bluetooth speaker; CDs all transferred to a server in the loft, which also has a bunch of DVDs, cyclocross videos etc. All those are accessible to a media player on the tablet (aswell as various phones, TV etc). In practice, the tablet mostly gets used for Spotify, streaming Svenness (cyclocross) videos off Vimeo, live-streaming various other bike races, and listening to Radio 4. Total cost of setup (including server in the loft) probably ~£250.

Edit: For me, the real beauty of this setup is that it takes up almost zero space. Tablet is on a kitchen cupboard door, speaker under the cabinet; no bulky stereo or speakers anywhere else. If I want access to any of the same media in the living room, it's all available through the TV.

Wheelspinner

I'm not a great user of the streaming services, although tempted with Tidal because it's at least high(er) resolution than most of the others. I can't stand listening to much of the compressed formats in playback, gives me headaches...

There's a bunch of good one-box solutions about these days although not many with CD drives any more. Ruark do some, might be worth investigation, model R7 is top line, R4 next down...

http://www.ruarkaudio.com/products/r7-overview

Dunno about budget impact though...

arthur_scrimshaw

Wheelspinner wrote:

I'm not a great user of the streaming services, although tempted with Tidal because it's at least high(er) resolution than most of the others. I can't stand listening to much of the compressed formats in playback, gives me headaches...

There's a bunch of good one-box solutions about these days although not many with CD drives any more. Ruark do some, might be worth investigation, model R7 is top line, R4 next down...

http://www.ruarkaudio.com/products/r7-overview

Dunno about budget impact though...

I can tell you it's multiples of the OT's £500 budget!

veronese68

My CD player has stopped seeing discs so i keep thinking i should get something new, problem is I don't understand half of the technology now. This is what I currently have, the amp and turntable are very nearly 30 years old.

itboffin

i took all my perfectly working technics and harmon kardon kit to the dump, no point selling on ebay as postage would have cost a fortune, gutting really as I'd had that stuff for +20 years but to be honest the volume was the only thing I havent been able to replicate with one single bit of modern (tiny) hardware.

Cambridge audio all the way for me

arthur_scrimshaw

I bought that tuner when they first came out, under the Videologic brand before they changed their name to Pure!
Depends what you want to do, if you want to keep the turntable for the occasional LP you'll find that most modern amps don't have a phono input so you'd need to buy a phono pre amp which connects to the turntable and then into a line level input on the amp. Decent one's start at £50 up to whatever you want to spend. I saw one recently for £17000!
See my earlier post - so many options now and depends how you want to listen.

MrSweary

itboffin wrote:

Cambridge audio all the way for me

Pre Sonos I always had their stuff. Thing is, I've never lived in a big enough place to do it or the Wharfedale speakers I have justice. Realised pretty early on that the bass was awesome if you were standing several rooms away. In the confines of a small flat it was just annoying the neighbours.

veronese68

itboffin wrote:

i took all my perfectly working technics and harmon kardon kit to the dump, no point selling on ebay as postage would have cost a fortune, gutting really as I'd had that stuff for +20 years but to be honest the volume was the only thing I havent been able to replicate with one single bit of modern (tiny) hardware.

Cambridge audio all the way for me

I know what you mean. I think I will keep the seperates as they are worthless otherwise and as Mr Scrimshaw says I may struggle with vinyl. The boy is now into vinyl and a lot of old punk bands so it has to stay. Sound quality took a hit after the EPO insisted my rather large floor standing speakers had to go, bookshelf speakers just aren't the same.
I'm going to have to read this thread more carefully and try to make sense of it all. Then write my Christmas list.
In the meantime I've been told cleaning the laser pickup thingy in the CD player may fix it.

itboffin

brilliant I just logged into my old spotify account and sure enough my old SCR and turbo playlists are still there from 2010

itboffin

MrSweary wrote:

itboffin wrote:

Cambridge audio all the way for me

Pre Sonos I always had their stuff. Thing is, I've never lived in a big enough place to do it or the Wharfedale speakers I have justice. Realised pretty early on that the bass was awesome if you were standing several rooms away. In the confines of a small flat it was just annoying the neighbours.

just me and the ever present west winds and a lot of animals :roll:

NIL0C

The Sonos kit seem pretty good but it isn't cheap and a few Chromecast Audios seem to do the same thing for a fraction of the cost, if you already have some speakers or a stereo.

rower63

Apple Airport Express connected to Harmon Kardon Soundsticks 3 does it for me, 1 in dining room and 1 in living room, streamed from iPhone, iPad, whoever manages to connect first.

pblakeney

dhope wrote:

PBlakeney wrote:

I had two set ups. 1. Old skool stereo. 2. Streaming with surround sound.
i have connected an old laptop to the old stereo. Pure bliss! :P

With a DAC?

Yes, as it happens.
Makes negligible difference. May be going on Ebay.

veronese68

rower63 wrote:

Apple Airport Express connected to Harmon Kardon Soundsticks 3 does it for me, 1 in dining room and 1 in living room, streamed from iPhone, iPad, whoever manages to connect first.

Hmm, interesting...
So with an airport express talking to wifi speakers magic happens?