toweliechaos said:
1. Low ceilinged room appx. 5.5m x 3m
2. I'm a musician and my taste selection incorporates a very, very wide range of styles
3. My vinyl has gone missing but will no doubt turn up one day and would be a 'very nice to have' if not a complete deal-clincher
4. Not necessarily. The Ruark is £2k without turntable for comparison
I've had a look at some of the suggestions and they all miss out here and there. I have auditioned the R7 and it is gorgeous in both sound and looks. My hesitation is in knowing that I might need/want to put a turntable nearby/on top which will rather shatter the styling. I would also quite like to have the speakers separate in order to better facilitate positioning of equipment.
Some of the suggestions are either missing Internet radio or a CD player or something else. Not sure why someone mentioned BeoLab 9s - a pair of speakers at £4k and no output device?!
I think logic says to go for the R7. Looks great, sounds great and all very neat and tidy. My heart however keeps saying "but surely you need separate speakers at the very least?". If the R7 was upgraded into a 5.1 DTS engine to which I could add my existing speakers, it would be a no-brainer to buy it along with the AV mount. But they've already confirmed that is nothing more than an idea at present.
If only stuff didn't need wires all the time...
Well, it's very important that you heard and liked the R7, so you know you wouldn't be dissabpointed.
If you like it, go for it. But before parting with that kind of money, you should at least hear some variants. There's plenty of alternatives out there, my go-to would be a
Naim Unitilite or
Uniti2 if you find a cheap ex-dem one. They have everything but a phono stage (although they do have analogue inputs) so all will be nice and clean. That, and I, for one, love the Naim sound - but of course you should audition for yourself. Partner a Unitilite with
Neat Motive 2SE,
Martin Logan Motion 20 (
floorstanders),
PMC DB1i,
Kef LS50 or
Focal Aria 906 (
standmounts) and you should have a good audition there.
Racks and stands from Atacama seem to be very well recieved, but if it is way overbudget, anything should be ok till you can afford better - I use IKEA stuff and tennis balls cut in half for now
As for turntable setup, it doesn't all need to be ugly looking - google
Audio Suspension ASU 100, it looks great and has good reviews. Only small problem would be cables, but hey - can't live without them, and there's ways to make them part of the decoration. Look into
Rega RP3 Exact (or with
Goldring 1042 cartrige if you want a smoother sound) or
VPI Traveler turntables with
Rega Phono MM MK2 /
Graham Slee Gram Amp 2 SE phono stages. Or even give a
VPI Nomad a go (it has an integrated phonostage which cannot be bypassed) if you want 1 less box (the phonostage) - it has great reviews.