Hi Fi

I run a fairly lowly Arcam setup (amp and CD), along with a sonos feeding into it and a Thorens TD150 mk II for vinyl. It may not be "expensive" but sounds good to me, especially vinyl now that the Thorens is fully overhauled and sounding good. I stuck Dark side of the moon on the other day and it sounded amazing.

Marcusjb, what dealership do you co-own, any of the ones near me?

Building up a good hifi is a bit like building a good set of wheels. Good hubs/spokes/rims don't necessarily build into a good wheel, its the right combination of components that matters. Of course if you want "good" i.e. light, then you typically have to pay more for light strong components.

marcusjb wrote:

There is the alternative school of thought of 'source first', which Linn were key to the advocation of this approach (back 40 years ago when everyone believed the speaker was the most important component). To that end, my system uses fairly modest speakers (a pair of grand and a half floor standers) driven by electronics that cost many times more.

I know I would rather have £ speakers driven by £££ electronics than £££ speakers driven by £ electronics - garbage in, garbage out.

Works for me, but as with everything in audio, use your ears and listen before making your own mind up.

I wonder, though, if what was true in the analogue era (when cartridges and turntables varied a lot in performance) and in the early digital era (when cheap CD players came with poor DACs) is true today? With most decent modern gear you have to work quite hard to send real garbage to your amplifier, and cheap PCs can substitute very effectively for expensive custom electronics. I'm especially sceptical about spending serious money on anything upstream of the DAC. One of your brands, Naim, will sell me 'the tantalising but mouth-wateringly expensive CD555' CD player for £15,000 ('eye-wateringly expensive' might be more accurate in my case!). By all accounts, this player is superbly engineered and the output is as good as it gets. On the other hand, I could make a bit-perfect copy of the CD with a £20 optical drive in a £300 PC, and stream it from a hard disk or network instead. This might make me question if my £15,000 was well spent, though I'd still have the problem of getting the audio to my amp.

One solution would be the wonderfully named Linn Klimax DS, a £13,000 digital music player. This is another beautiful piece of kit, with the sort of design that makes Jonathan Ive envious, and reviewers praise its fantastic sound. Alternatively, I could just buy an £80 Apple Airport Express and get bit-perfect transfer of the digital audio to my receiver's DAC (or a dedicated DAC). This isn't really fair on the CD555 or the Klimax DS, both of which include their own DACs and have analogue outputs. But £13,000+ buys an awful lot of DAC.

The Klimax would also handle 24-bit audio, which the Airport Express does not (though future versions might, given the rumours about 24 bit files coming to iTunes). But right now I own no 24 bit music at all, and the results from blinded comparisons don't make me too enthusiastic about upgrading any of my existing collection (especially given the age of my ears!). It's also unfair of me just to quote the high end pricing - I see that Linn makes some much more reasonably priced gear, all the way down to the £1000 Sneaky, which includes an amplifier and ought to be a big seller.