Recent content by francophile

As promised .... I bought a 2nd hand Arcam A85 about 10 days ago and am very happy with it; it's in excellent condition and has a phono stage fitted so I can also listen to my old LPs and, to my ears at least, it makes a good partner to my Dynaudios. Prior to that I tried a Yamaha AS700 which...

Thanks again, mattthewpiano. You're absolutely right about the 'frustration' (now veering towards desperation!); it is easy to take for granted the easy access we all of us have to so much wonderful & varied music, but being without it will enhance the joy of getting it back again. Your...

Thanks to everyone who has taken the trouble to contrbute to this thead - for your generosity in sharing your knowledge and experience; I'm a bit less ignorant now than I was several days ago. There's been a bit of sidetracking, I suppose: interesting, but the most useful for me as the OP have...

Thanks altruistic.lemon - just the sort of thing I could easily get wrong. I'll probably opt for an Arcam A85

Hi matthewpiano - I'm on a learning curve here and know little about hi-fi separates or about the jargon used to describe their various qualities. I'm just looking for an amp at a price I can afford (around £350) which will do justice to the kind of music I like to listen to, and which will...

matthewpiano - thanks for the arcam A85 suggestion, which I will certainly follow up. Of the two groups of amp you mention, I would probably opt for the second & though it would be nice to have an amp that could do justice to (say) Tennstedt's live recording of Mahler 2, my priority is for...

I think all this is getting to what is the nub of the issue for me. Hi-fi equipment seems to be made to reproduce the kind of music that most people buy/want to listen to: no surprises there, but a 'good' amp - a five star WHF recommendation for example - should surely be able to cope well with...

therecruiter, thanks for your suggestions - the Arcam 3 is an old amp which I had already, I connected it up as a stop-gap until I find a suitable replacement; my apologies if I didn't make that clear. Tha Alpha 9 doesn't seem too hard to find secondhand (unlike the A65, which can't be found...

Thanks for the further suggestions. I sent back the Yamaha and hooked up the Arcam 3, an old amp but well-recommended in its time; I'm not too familiar with hi-fi jargon but after the AS500 it sounded rather veiled and withdrawn, but fairly stable in quality across the registers, with the...

Thank you all for your quick and helpful responses. When researching a suitable system I decided on the Yamaha instead of the Marantz only at the last minute, partly influenced by some comments on the Amazon site. I think Chris that you must also have made a good choice of speakers. Tricky...

Er....that should be 'replacement'. Terrible speller, this keyboard.

Hi all, I recently bought this budget system : Marantz CD6004, Yamaha AS500 amp, Dynaudio DM 2/6 speakers, (plus Sennheiser HD650 headphones), cables are QED Flat 79 taken from my old system. I listen exclusively to classical music, and particularly chamber music - string quartets, solo...