Hi,
It seems the more I read the more confused I get... so hopefully some of you could help me out.
* I intend to spend about £1000 on a hifi setup for my living room.
* Most of the music I listen to will be digital 320 kbs / Lossless format
* Want as good as sound as possible but does not need to be extremely loud
* I currently own an 80gig video ipod which can hold most of my music
* As well as the digital music I would like to use my turntable and TV with the setup
* I will also connect a laptop from time to time to use spotify etc
* I don’t intend to buy a CD separate at this stage.
Ok, so what should I do to get the most out of my digital music collection and avoid an expensive component being underused due to a weak link?
Speakers - I suppose something like the B&W 685 (£380) might be a good place to start? Or B&W 684 (£700) to splash out. Would something like the big 684 be wasted if using mostly for MP3s and at a moderate volume?
amp - Something has to power these speakers, but what? NAD C326BEE (£325) maybe?
But then what’s the story with something like "Fatman iTube 182 / iTube dock" (£649) described by whathifi as "It’s walking a line between being the best iPod system we’ve heard, and an impressive £500-worth of stereo amplifier"? Would this really sound much better than the NAD or are you just paying for the fancy looks?
Interface / source - iPod docks come in a huge range of prices (apple universal dock £35 arcam r-dock £150)... is there really much difference in the sound quality? Is there much difference in sounds between a dock or just using a line from the headphones into an amp? Would a network wireless setup (eg Squeezebox) sound any better than the ipod?
Separate DAC - Don’t really know much about these.... should I?
Hopefully that explains my situation. Any advice you could give would be great!
P.S Just to confuse matters further. I am far more interested in music that films... but I suppose it would be nice to have some kind of very basic surround sound system if it could be added at a small cost. If I buy very good stereo speakers and a multi channel amp, could I that add much cheaper sub, centre and rear speakers to use with films? Are there any multichannel amps that are particularly good for playing music?
Thanks again
Conor
It seems the more I read the more confused I get... so hopefully some of you could help me out.
* I intend to spend about £1000 on a hifi setup for my living room.
* Most of the music I listen to will be digital 320 kbs / Lossless format
* Want as good as sound as possible but does not need to be extremely loud
* I currently own an 80gig video ipod which can hold most of my music
* As well as the digital music I would like to use my turntable and TV with the setup
* I will also connect a laptop from time to time to use spotify etc
* I don’t intend to buy a CD separate at this stage.
Ok, so what should I do to get the most out of my digital music collection and avoid an expensive component being underused due to a weak link?
Speakers - I suppose something like the B&W 685 (£380) might be a good place to start? Or B&W 684 (£700) to splash out. Would something like the big 684 be wasted if using mostly for MP3s and at a moderate volume?
amp - Something has to power these speakers, but what? NAD C326BEE (£325) maybe?
But then what’s the story with something like "Fatman iTube 182 / iTube dock" (£649) described by whathifi as "It’s walking a line between being the best iPod system we’ve heard, and an impressive £500-worth of stereo amplifier"? Would this really sound much better than the NAD or are you just paying for the fancy looks?
Interface / source - iPod docks come in a huge range of prices (apple universal dock £35 arcam r-dock £150)... is there really much difference in the sound quality? Is there much difference in sounds between a dock or just using a line from the headphones into an amp? Would a network wireless setup (eg Squeezebox) sound any better than the ipod?
Separate DAC - Don’t really know much about these.... should I?
Hopefully that explains my situation. Any advice you could give would be great!
P.S Just to confuse matters further. I am far more interested in music that films... but I suppose it would be nice to have some kind of very basic surround sound system if it could be added at a small cost. If I buy very good stereo speakers and a multi channel amp, could I that add much cheaper sub, centre and rear speakers to use with films? Are there any multichannel amps that are particularly good for playing music?
Thanks again
Conor