Be Excellent To Each Other

There must be some hi-fi buffs here.

I am looking to buy a decent-ish hi-fi set-up. Hyphens.

My needs are fairly basic: CD player, amp, cables and speakers. I guess that's all I need.

Budget is about £500 but I could go a little higher for the right combination of kit.

In terms of what I am asking it to do; well, I love music with guitars in mostly. I am not one of those people who say they like everything. I don't dig rap music, or RnB or dance music, although there are specific exceptions. Mostly I like folk-y stuff like Low and Nick Drake, so the system will need to cope with soft, breathy acoustic sounds. But I also really dig hard rock and metal. Lush stuff like, Tool, A Perfect Circle, Alice in Chains and so on.

Music is something I really enjoy so I want to get this right.

Any recommendations? It's a minefield of conflicting advice out there.

My Dad is a bit of a Hi-Fi buff, not so much myself, but £500 should see you well if you're just after playing CDs. I'd recommend spending the bulk of your wedge on the amp and speakers. I'd also recommend trawling eBay for an amp. Perhaps not speakers though because they're more easily damaged. Not so sure about brands. My Dad seems to like Musical Fidelity at the minute.

Oh, and my Dad is also into metal. Although I imagine he probably scoffs at your "new" metal bands like Tool.

BETEO recommends that you put at least 20% of your budget aside for cabling.

HEH.

In the alternative, don't let your wife anywhere near any of this.

You could do a lot worse than bimbling along to Richer Sounds and listening to whatever end of line stock they have at good price, as long as you ignore the Cambridge Audio stuff they will try and flog you.

Thanks.

If there are any specific recommendations for kit that might help narrow my search that would be exce.

If you're going budget, see what Marantz and Denon you can listen to. If they have TEAC amps, go for them too.

For speakers, some £200 Missions or B&Ws are good.

What's the deal with Cambridge Audio? Are they own-brand like Tesco Technnika or somesuch?

As for speakers, I've a pair of Mordaunt-Short Carnivals jacked into a Denon stack which is fifteen years old and the sound is better than my mate gets from his £300 CD player, £300 amp and £500 speakers.... I'm not sure how old my Carnival speakers are exactly, but they're either one or two years older than I am, and I am 34. Even the cardboard box they came is is still in one solid piece. Wonderful they are.

I'd also urge mistrust of anything that has a graphic equaliser instead of a bass and treble dial. And no device with 'bass boost' ever sounded any good without it on either, they're a fucking gimmick.

Denon and Marantz seem to be the main two in the low-mid range of separates systems.

Yeah, treble and bass controls are mandatory. I wouldn't trust a graphic equaliser on something in this price bracket. Actually, I had a 'dynamic bass boost' button on a midi system about ten years ago which really lifted and enriched the sound of everything so was left on constantly. I was wary of it, but as it was backlit with a red light I can only suppose it was designed to be left on just to make the system look funkier or something.

i'm starting to think my budget isn't going to cut the mustard.

This is highly acclaimed:

http://www.whathifi.com/review/marantz-cd6004

One thing I am wary of his the whole mix and match concept. Does it matter at all that you have differently branded pieces of kit connected? It's just a signal down a wire so as long as the cable is up to the task presumably it wouldn't be affected by, say a Yamaha talking to a Marantz?

It's just a case of what the components are. Maybe Yamaha make good amps but shit CD players. Maybe a manufacturer has gone out of their way to make their amp and CD player sound awesome together. It's always worth trying things out. Just go with what you think sounds best; manufacturer is secondary.

Apart from B&W speakers. I got a pair of £200 speakers in 1999, and they still sound awesome, even after pimping the rest of my gear.

For what it's worth, I have no intention of buying another CD player. All my music is on a hard drive, and my laptop is connected to a DAC via an optical cable.

***

And yeah, GY, Cambridge is RS in house gear.

Audio wise, it doesn't matter in the slightest. The only benefit you might get is a more universal remote control.

Bloody hell, this is making me think that my decade old cheapo PC speakers for music combined with the HDTVs internal speakers for TV/360 doesn't quite cut the mustard around here...

Maybe I'll have a wander around a richersounds at some point...

If you have a Superfi, please go there.

Treble and bass controls????!! REMOTE CONTROL?????!!

These things are scorned by true audiophiles. But if you're not as mad as a box of frogs take no notice of these people.

The same Cambridge Audio stuff that sound technicians and engineers I know recommend? Right. The main 'issue' with Cambridge kit is the neutral nature of the sound output, since many people prefer warmer audio. But when twinned with like speakers, such as the S30s, Cambridge kit can be very, very good. As for cabling, my advice, again on the basis of what engineers have told me: unless you're cabling over several metres, just buy the second- or third-cheapest of whatever's on offer in the store, if it's somewhere like Richer.

I'm not saying Cambridge stuff is bad, far from it, but it isn't always the best value for money at that price range.
If you don't know what you are looking for exactly, then it is impossible to get an unbiased opinion from Richer Sounds if they throw CA into the mix, for obvious reasons.

Ah, righto. I agree with that. Mind you, local Richer bods are pretty good when it comes to sales, and only tend to mention Cambridge as one option from several (and typically a relevant option).

One possible option to consider: eBay. A lot of audiophiles are total geeks and offload kit pretty quickly. I've been tracking a bunch of amps of various makes over the past week, and seen £600+ amps typically going for about £100–£150. Coming up to Christmas plus a generally depressed market makes it a good time for a second-hand buyer.

Plus, not being funny. but a few of us know sound engineers. They, like everyone else, have different ears and brains.

Cambridge do a very nice DAC.

Well, quite, but the original post sounded a lot like "ignore Cambridge, because Richer will try and flog it to you", despite it sometimes being a very suitable choice. Personally, I'm not overly thrilled with the A5 I bought for the office, but it was fine for a budget unit. (Two A5s used to power the 'space workshop' performance hall at my old college, IIRC, but I wish I'd gone for a slightly more expensive unit. Also, it doesn't pair that well with the TDLs I have.) But the 640A I grabbed second-hand is wonderful in our living room with some S30s.

I guess the main thing is always to do your research first, before popping to the shops. As I said, our local Richer lot (Guildford) are good, but I've also experienced rather the opposite (in Reading, with some pretty bloody lazy staff when I last went there a few years back).

You shouldn't be paying more than 50p a meter for speaker cable otherwise you're getting screwed. As long as it's 5mm+ thick copper wound that's decently insulated and you keep the cable distances below 10m, it will sound as good as anything else. I've installed rooms at out uni using mains cable for speakers cable, works perfectly, esp since we conceal it within floor/wall conduit. Not so pretty in your front room, but depends how fussed you are with aesthetics.

Og hod, I really need to get some speakers for my computer as well. Procrastination be my name.

Also, Tool aren't nu-metal. They're, er, prog-rock.

^^ This. I always loved Do Coat Hangers Sound As Good Monster Cables? on this subject. (Also: people who spend £100 on one-metre HDMI leads. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?)

FUCK OFF ALL OF YOU

They were gold plated!

How much room have you got?

If plenty, get big speakers. Big speakers are always better, because you're not fighting against fundamental laws of physics to make them sound good.

Seconding the advice on spending most of your money on amp and speakers.

Get decent speaker cable. It'll last you most of your life, and does actually make a difference. No need to go wild though.

A second hand Arcam Alpha 8 is a good amp. I have had one for (counts on fingers. Christ, is it that long?) 13 years and it's pretty bomb proof. They are fairly economical to repair if something does go wrong too. They can sound a bit warm though, but paired with some big, forward speakers they work well.

Cambridge Audio stuff is fine, my parent's have a CA amp and it suits them. I have a CA Discmagic + DACmagic combo which is *brilliant* but would only be available second-hand, and I'd caution against used CD players.

NAD amps are very good. You can pick them up reasonably cheaply 2nd hand, and again they last for ever. You cannot go wrong with a NAD c340 if you find one at a decent price.

Marantz make excellent cheap(ish) CD players, and TEAC are also pretty good.

The best thing you can do though is get yourself down to a decent Hi-Fi shop and audition a few set-ups. Go when they're not too busy and the staff will be happy to help. Richer Sounds are pretty good here, as a lot of the remaining Hi-Fi shops might be a bit snobby about someone with £500 to spend. I'd leave it until after Xmas though, as RS get very busy this time of year. Personal taste matters a lot, so choose something that sounds good to you. Take some of your own CDs, and don't let the staff turn it up too loud. Most stuff sounds good loud in a small demo room, but you want to listen at the volume you'll normally listen to at home.

My folks have one of those. Not sure how old it is, but it's got to be around 30 years. Great piece of kit. NAD record decks, though, aren't quite as durable. I think their one went after 25!

I bought a Marantz PM6003 last year after my old trusty Denon amp carked it:

http://www.whathifi.com/review/marantz-pm6003

It sounds very nice has two sets of speaker outputs (wanted that for bi-wiring my future speakers*)and was £70 cheaper than anywhere else at £250 ish.

Oh you can get the amp for £199 now:
http://marketing.sevenoakssoundandvisio ... rance.aspx

As for CD players get a Rega RP1 turntable.


*I listened to a few sets of speakers in Richer Sounds a while back, all 5star rated ones between £100 - £200: Tannoy Mercury V1, Mission MX1 and Cambridge Audio S30's.

The Cambridge Audio S30's blew the others away completely. So I think I'll be getting those in the new year unless something else turns up in between saving.

And the rest of the post was so sensible!

To be fair he did say decent, not expensive. You probably don't want to use five strand bell-wire or something.

It never occurred to me to use 2 core power cable as speaker wire. Not a bad idea that.

I was going to edit and ask what "decent" meant, but, er, didn't.

My sound engineer mate had his (very expensive) living room setup wired with grey 2.5mm^2 twin and earth, which costs about 50p per metre (or much less if you get some left over stuff with the old colours).

If you want to go to ludicrous extremes, a piece of welding cable threaded down the middle of a 15mm copper plumbing pipe will surpass the theoretical performance of any cable you can buy, and as a bonus is shielded, if you care about that.

For the price, they're very good, although I've heard they do need twinning with the right amp (working a bit less well with warm kit). Still, they make my office TDLs sound like shit. Quite tempted to buy another pair, but I hate 'waste' (as in, kicking out the TDLs).

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with my Celestion Impact 10's I have at the moment. They're just the last piece of my old hifi that I've yet to upgrade. I'd try and use them elsewhere in the house or sell them to go towards the S30's.

I splurged on new cable for wiring the 5.1 in the bedroom, because the cables I had were wrong-length-shaped apart from some spectacularly crappy stuff (about 5 strands) I got with free surrounds from Toshiba.

I ended up with two rolls of this 79 strand OFC cable because when I bought the first roll it was cheaper than the 42 strand in the same range (about £7.50 for 20m!) and I was going to try and bodge the other sections, then I changed my mind and they'd raised the price but I wanted the same stuff all over.

I reckon £23 for 40m is only slightly over the top.

The transparent sheath is stupid but I was trunking it all in anyway, which I've now done with D-Line stuff that looks ace

Yeah, by decent I mean "not shitty bell cable" rather than "£10 a metre". Richer Sounds cheapest is perfectly good (I don't think it's actually that cheap these days, but you might get them to throw it in if you buy everything from them. They normally do).

Mains power cable works really well, but it's quite fat and inflexible, if you pay a bit more for yer actual speaker cable, it'll look nicer. If aesthetics are no concern though...

http://www.cableuniverse.co.uk/2-core-r ... etres.html

35p a meter.

Sorted.

100 metres.

Ideal for really wide stereo.

Or rewiring DavPaz's headphones.

I want to get some of these when I buy my place.

BeeX group buy

I'd quite like to get a nice stereo, as currently we are using either little docking stations with our MP3 players, or our surrounding sound* system and while they are all OK they aren't particularly involving or suited to sitting down for a 'proper' listen. However, all the recent music I've obtained has been variable quality MP3s so that could end up being the weak link, so I would only be after something middling. I used to have some big floorstanders and they were good (and loud!) but ugly as fuck.






*My wife's dad calls it that, and it's kind of charming in a way. At first we called it that to gently make fun, but now it has 'stuck'.

Honestly, even a cheap "proper" hi-fi (like the cheapest package Richer Sounds offer) will make crappy MP3s sound even crappier, so if you're mostly listening to them, you're best sticking with something lo-er fi. Or just pirate in better quality from now on.

Best improvement you could make would be getting your ears syringed.

Pardon?

HALF PAST TWO!