Question Dad vintage setup help

[Alice in Layne]

Hello everyone. Im new to this forum and a beginner to hi fi stuff. Im currently building a hi fi setup with my dad for listening to music and occasionally recording some music. Our current equipment consists of the following: Pioneer A-0012 amp, a pair of Yamaha NS1000M, two original tube (pre 80s) Pultecs EQP-1A, and a Gates Sta-Level tube compressor as the main equipments. We currently do not have any CD, turntable or cassette/tape player, and my father believes it would be easier to simply play music from Apple Music in Hi Ress Lossless via wire, rather than buying any other equipment. Would it be too much of a sacrilege to play music directly from our iPhone or would it be better to get some record player as well? Any record player suggestions that suits the vintage character of our setup? Or any other suggestions about our setup or anything I should know? Thanks for your help!

PS: we mostly listen to jazz and grunge, if it's any relevant

 

[Revolutions]

Nothing is sacrilege when it comes to listening to music. The only thing you need to know is that you’ll be unlikely to get Apple Music from your iPhone as lossless.

The easiest way to get music from your phone to the amp is buy a music streamer that has a built-in DAC. The WiiM Pro Plus is a great option at around £300. The app is pretty good & will allow you to stream to the stereo via airplay2 at cd quality.

For turntables, both Pro-ject & Rega do excellent models from entry level upwards. You can’t really go wrong with either brand at whatever budget you wanted to spend.

p.s. Alice in Chains 🤘

 

[Witterings]

It's down to personal preference to a large dgree, a lot of streaming music is now better quality than vinyl but some people feel that a record has a warmer sound and any imperfections / crackles give it character.

For many it's also about browsing through the albums and having the artwork / information provided on the cover so it's not just about the music.

The flip side of that vinyl has become awful expensive, you could also look at getting a streamer like a WiiM Pro Plus and casting from the phone rather than wired, a streaming subscription will cost a lot less and give instant access to 80 million tracks than building a large collection of vinyl / buying a turntable but so much of it is what you / your dad wants from it.

 

[DCarmi]

I'm a believer in "good enough". If you or your Dad are streaming using a pair of tin cans and are happy then that is "good enough".

Streaming by wire would work well enough but you do need to plug in and trail (I assume) wires.

As mentioned a Wiim device is wireless and simple to use (I have a couple). You could try a Wiim Mini which is fairly cheap at £90 but won't give the best quality sound but might be "good enough". The Pro Plus version (£219) would be a fairly big step up in quality, but worth the investment on vintage kit.

As a Vinyl lover with a large-ish record collection, steer clear unless you already have an LP collection. Not everything can be found on streaming services but 95% probably is and also a lot of stuff you've missed out on. If you must have a physical media component, CD is the way to go. Discs can be found quite cheaply.

 

[Tinman1952]

my father believes it would be easier to simply play music from Apple Music in Hi Ress Lossless via wire, rather than buying any other equipment

He is certainly correct. An old iphone or iPad serves as a fine streamer at minimum expense...
Airplay would not give him Hi-res if that's what he wants.

 

[Revolutions]

He is certainly correct. An old iphone or iPad serves as a fine streamer at minimum expense...
Airplay would not give him Hi-res if that's what he wants.

Using lightning connector to 3.5mm will stop lossless playback as well.

Probably marginal in both cases, but worth highlighting.

 

[DCarmi]

Airplay would not give him Hi-res if that's what he wants.

That's an issue with Apple Music. It's quite hard to get hires out. Even the expensive Airpods Max can't do it!

Airplay does max out around CD quality, which is probably enough for most people, but not as good as Apple Music can support. You can squeeze a little more out of the lightning connector using the Apple convertor to 3.5mm jack.

There again, if it were me, I'd not be overly bothered about how hi-res the sound was, CD quality is probably enough. Personally I dislike dragging cables to connect my phone to the hifi (been there and done that).

To be honest, I think the simplest solution would be a Wiim Pro Plus and just use the phone as a remote. You could still connect to the Pro Plus using wires, if you really want to.

If I were concerned about how hi-res the stream was, I'd switch to Tidal or Amazon Music. You can get free trials with all the relevant services.

 

[twinkletoes]

@DCarmi not really that hard at all. The perfect streamer is in his pocket. But as you say more cumbersome all streaming services have a got yah about them. But many will bundle Apple TV+ with music which offers really good value that other platforms just can't compete with. So wouldn't right off the Apple Music experience all together.

@Alice in Layne

There are many routes you can go so you will get alot of conflicting advice which all have merit. Here is one way that will be fairly cheap but will only allow input from a the iPhone nothing else like a tv or CD player. But will give you full fat hires from apple.

Purchase an iPhone camera kit cable, basically a USBC/lightening connector to USB. Then purchase a cheap dragonfly black ,red or colbolt, what ever fits your budget and connect that to a 3.5mm to RCA. Set the iPhone to stream full output in the Apple Music settings and have at it with full fat apple, pretty much the one way to do it even with more expensive dacs.

With a black £60 (amazon) apple cable £30 and a cheap 3.5mm to RCA probably just under a ton.

 

[Fandango Andy]

Hello everyone. Im new to this forum and a beginner to hi fi stuff. Im currently building a hi fi setup with my dad for listening to music and occasionally recording some music. Our current equipment consists of the following: Pioneer A-0012 amp, a pair of Yamaha NS1000M, two original tube (pre 80s) Pultecs EQP-1A, and a Gates Sta-Level tube compressor as the main equipments. We currently do not have any CD, turntable or cassette/tape player, and my father believes it would be easier to simply play music from Apple Music in Hi Ress Lossless via wire, rather than buying any other equipment. Would it be too much of a sacrilege to play music directly from our iPhone or would it be better to get some record player as well? Any record player suggestions that suits the vintage character of our setup? Or any other suggestions about our setup or anything I should know? Thanks for your help!

PS: we mostly listen to jazz and grunge, if it's any relevant

Start with online music, skip the mobile phone and go with a streamer. WiiM Pro+ or WiiM Mini with and external DAC (I went SMSL SU-1, which is excellent, but lots of other options) are going to give best sound for the money.

Record players are a whole new can of worms. There is a player for every taste and budget. If you want a new one with classic old-school looks without stretching to Linn money try this:

Home review

A gloriously designed turntable, but it’s not quite a modern classic

www.whathifi.com

 

[Alice in Layne]

Nothing is sacrilege when it comes to listening to music. The only thing you need to know is that you’ll be unlikely to get Apple Music from your iPhone as lossless.

The easiest way to get music from your phone to the amp is buy a music streamer that has a built-in DAC. The WiiM Pro Plus is a great option at around £300. The app is pretty good & will allow you to stream to the stereo via airplay2 at cd quality.

For turntables, both Pro-ject & Rega do excellent models from entry level upwards. You can’t really go wrong with either brand at whatever budget you wanted to spend.

p.s. Alice in Chains 🤘

It's down to personal preference to a large dgree, a lot of streaming music is now better quality than vinyl but some people feel that a record has a warmer sound and any imperfections / crackles give it character.

For many it's also about browsing through the albums and having the artwork / information provided on the cover so it's not just about the music.

The flip side of that vinyl has become awful expensive, you could also look at getting a streamer like a WiiM Pro Plus and casting from the phone rather than wired, a streaming subscription will cost a lot less and give instant access to 80 million tracks than building a large collection of vinyl / buying a turntable but so much of it is what you / your dad wants from it.

I'm a believer in "good enough". If you or your Dad are streaming using a pair of tin cans and are happy then that is "good enough".

Streaming by wire would work well enough but you do need to plug in and trail (I assume) wires.

As mentioned a Wiim device is wireless and simple to use (I have a couple). You could try a Wiim Mini which is fairly cheap at £90 but won't give the best quality sound but might be "good enough". The Pro Plus version (£219) would be a fairly big step up in quality, but worth the investment on vintage kit.

As a Vinyl lover with a large-ish record collection, steer clear unless you already have an LP collection. Not everything can be found on streaming services but 95% probably is and also a lot of stuff you've missed out on. If you must have a physical media component, CD is the way to go. Discs can be found quite cheaply.

Start with online music, skip the mobile phone and go with a streamer. WiiM Pro+ or WiiM Mini with and external DAC (I went SMSL SU-1, which is excellent, but lots of other options) are going to give best sound for the money.

Record players are a whole new can of worms. There is a player for every taste and budget. If you want a new one with classic old-school looks without stretching to Linn money try this:

Home review

A gloriously designed turntable, but it’s not quite a modern classic

www.whathifi.com

Thank you very much! I guess we'll be keep heading down that route for now and the near future, as it seems as a simple and cheaper way to go. We don't even have any vinyl collection yet, and albums can get really expensive where we live, so a Wiim device or even just plugin in some iPad or iPhone will probably do just fine. To be honest, as long as we get past the 256kbps AAC compression we'll be fine. I was wondering if we would miss out much by playing music from our phones. Maybe some day we'll add some vintage turntable my father's been searching for (way too expensive for now) or a cassette deck - we have a TEAC R313 tape recorder - so that we would also be able to listen to our own recordings.

 

[Alice in Layne]

He is certainly correct. An old iphone or iPad serves as a fine streamer at minimum expense...
Airplay would not give him Hi-res if that's what he wants.

Using lightning connector to 3.5mm will stop lossless playback as well.

Probably marginal in both cases, but worth highlighting.

That's an issue with Apple Music. It's quite hard to get hires out. Even the expensive Airpods Max can't do it!

Airplay does max out around CD quality, which is probably enough for most people, but not as good as Apple Music can support. You can squeeze a little more out of the lightning connector using the Apple convertor to 3.5mm jack.

There again, if it were me, I'd not be overly bothered about how hi-res the sound was, CD quality is probably enough. Personally I dislike dragging cables to connect my phone to the hifi (been there and done that).

To be honest, I think the simplest solution would be a Wiim Pro Plus and just use the phone as a remote. You could still connect to the Pro Plus using wires, if you really want to.

If I were concerned about how hi-res the stream was, I'd switch to Tidal or Amazon Music. You can get free trials with all the relevant services.

@DCarmi not really that hard at all. The perfect streamer is in his pocket. But as you say more cumbersome all streaming services have a got yah about them. But many will bundle Apple TV+ with music which offers really good value that other platforms just can't compete with. So wouldn't right off the Apple Music experience all together.

@Alice in Layne

There are many routes you can go so you will get alot of conflicting advice which all have merit. Here is one way that will be fairly cheap but will only allow input from a the iPhone nothing else like a tv or CD player. But will give you full fat hires from apple.

Purchase an iPhone camera kit cable, basically a USBC/lightening connector to USB. Then purchase a cheap dragonfly black ,red or colbolt, what ever fits your budget and connect that to a 3.5mm to RCA. Set the iPhone to stream full output in the Apple Music settings and have at it with full fat apple, pretty much the one way to do it even with more expensive dacs.

With a black £60 (amazon) apple cable £30 and a cheap 3.5mm to RCA probably just under a ton.

Thank you very much! We're not particularly obsessed with MAX quality as I guess we wouldn't really perceive that much of a difference, as long as we get past the 256kbps. We'll probably get some DAC and simply plug it in to some iPad or iPhone. Maybe, when the final setup comes to life get a Wiim device.