advice - complete novice

[admin_exported]

Hi

I am looking to invest in my first CD and amplifier set up with a budget of £1000. I do have a set of four year old dyno audio contour 1.1 speakers book shelf speakers and QED silver anniversary speaker cable. I'm overwhelmed by reviews and combinations, so suggestions please from those who know. The room is 26ft by 12ft and I listen to classical, blues, rock, indie. The amp needs to link up with my apple mac.

Thanks

Chaos Mosquito

 

[John Duncan]

Nice combination would be the Cambridge 740 pair - you could get an airport express to stream to them, with the advantage that the 740C has an optical digital input, so you could use its DAC to play lossless files, which would most likely be better than the CD player. Alternatively you could eschew the player altogether and get a DACMagic....

 

[Anonymous]

Good advice from JD. If I were starting a system from scratch, with the benefit of hindsight, I would spend my initial budget on one component and go for quality, rather than spread it over an amp and CD player. So whether or not you decide to dispense with CDs in the longer term, I would say spend that money on an amp - either with an affordable DAC such as the Cambridge DACMagic that John suggests, or making do with the analogue output from the Mac for the time being (it probably won't sound great) and adding the other components at a later date when funds allow.

I guess it all depends how likely you are to suffer from upgrade-itus at a later date. You're already displaying the early symptoms by having joined this forum...

 

[Anonymous]

tractorboy:Good advice from JD. If I were starting a system from scratch, with the benefit of hindsight, I would spend my initial budget on one component and go for quality, rather than spread it over an amp and CD player. So whether or not you decide to dispense with CDs in the longer term, I would say spend that money on an amp - either with an affordable DAC such as the Cambridge DACMagic that John suggests, or making do with the analogue output from the Mac for the time being (it probably won't sound great) and adding the other components at a later date when funds allow.

I guess it all depends how likely you are to suffer from upgrade-itus at a later date. You're already displaying the early symptoms by having joined this forum...

This is good advise. I would definitely go for a good amp with a decent DAC. The analogue output will not do the job; but putting the money for the CD player into a DAC and something like a squeezebox would really do the job.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks to you all for coming back to me, talk of DACs and streaming took me right out of my comfort zone and back to the mags. So if I am understanding this correctly I should be looking at a better amp, (£800ish), a DACmagic, something like the sonos/squeeze book and if I want to turn the computer off something like the off buffalo terastion to store?.Am I on the right track?

Again thanks

 

[The_Lhc]

Yes, although it's a squeezebox, not book (helps with the google searches!).

sonos is an excellent system, although it's on the expensive side (£699 for the starter bundle) and is a multi-room system. If you don't need to stream to more than one room then the squeezebox might be the better choice. It's certainly the cheaper option.

For the record I have Sonos and it's brilliant but it may not be suited for your application.