Lost in my Hifi/Wifi system

[shado]

Christmas 2009 started off like this

By the first week of January....

My daughters bedroom is receiving a revamp next week so her system will sit nicely on a drawer unit. The speaker wire supplied with KEF system was pretty poor and so was replaced with Chord Carnival Silverscreen and has made a difference in sound quality.

The ZP120 and Wharfedale Diamonds sits nicely in the built in shelving above our heads and sounds great with 80's music. This one I call my nostalgic system and it never ceases to amaze me how such a small speaker can produce such a full bodied sound with ample bass. Connection is with Chord Carnival Silverscreen.

The S5 works well in the kitchen and has been used outside in the garden. It is like an uncouth ghetto blaster where even my wife has picked up that it sounds a little bit harsh compared to the Cyrus source. But it will be great for the eventual BBQ party outside and has saved me some money as I was going to purchase the Soundcast Outcast.

Once the snow had gone I finally received this main unit:

As my living room is tiny I had to find a unit with smaller proportions as well as speakers and now have the Cyrus 6SE, 8XPd and KEF IQ50 that are slim in stature. Chord Cobra interconnetcs, Carnival silverscreen Cables and Prodac digital cable. A sonos ZP 90 is discretely hidden behind the Soundbar to allow digital music connection and I can send out music from the Cyrus CD player into the Sonos system. I am really impressed with this combination and it is nice to see my wife digging out CDs from our collection. I like to tweak my hifi idc and with the various Cyrus upgrades on offer, I know I have the chosen the right system and I like the revealing nature I can now hear in the music. Wifi has injected fun into the hifi world and just goes to show that you do not need big bulky boxes dominating your house anymore!

 

[The_Lhc]

I don't want to sound negative, and forgive me if this offends, but it isn't supposed to, but I don't think you've really got the idea of the Sonos system:

firstly using a ZP90 into a Zeppelin is quite an odd idea, surely an S5 would have done both jobs? I think the S5 has an input so an ipod could be plugged in if required, but really that should be redundant because...

secondly, why are you using the ZP90 in the living room to stream your CD player around the house? I don't really understand why you haven't got all your CDs ripped losslessly to a PC somewhere, so that every zoneplayer can play everything you've got wherever and whenever you want it to.

I've never heard anyone say the S5 was harsh incidentally, I suspect that might in part be due to the shiny tiling and marble worktop it's surrounded by.

What do you think of the iQ50s just out of curiosity?

 

[shado]

My son wanted a Zeppelin for Xmas rather than the S5 and it allows him to listen to Napster. I have not got round to recording 500 CDs yet and was looking at a dedicated Buffalo Drive so as not to bog down my PC. You know how it is with a new toy I like to experiment trying different options. It is not ideal as the sound does break up from time to time. The sound of the S5 could well be the location in the kitchen and I do enjoy what it does outside as the sub woofer gives it some muscle. My wife and I were listening to the same track on the S5 and the KEF iQ50 and it just sounded harsher. My wife loves the Bass on the iQ50 as it is deep enough but is not intrusive (she is not a sub woofer fan). I just like the open, detailed midrange they deliver. As my speakers are set up in a L shape configuration because of the rubbish design of the living room the one near to the settee fits in just nicely and I don't have to worry too much about the sweet spot owing to the configuration of the tweeter to the woofer. I was first impressed with the iQ 30 as these really kicked out more bass but I have now grown accustomed to my discrete version.

I really do love the Sonos setup and once I am up and running with the lossless files it will be tremendous. I have a good mesh network with 6 in total and the only time I had trouble was when we had a power cut and it took approx 3 hours to reset itself, so I am impressed with its robustness.

How long have you had yours out of curiosity and do you agree it is reliable?

 

[The_Lhc]

shado:My son wanted a Zeppelin for Xmas rather than the S5 and it allows him to listen to Napster. I have not got round to recording 500 CDs yet and was looking at a dedicated Buffalo Drive so as not to bog down my PC.

It's a good idea, most PCs will cope with the load without even noticing to be honest, but it does mean you don't need the PC on all the time in order to listen to music.

You know how it is with a new toy I like to experiment trying different options. It is not ideal as the sound does break up from time to time.

Is that from Napster? I understand they may have some loading issues at the moment. I've heard a few people say they're getting break ups or tracks that just won't play but in every case it seems to be down to Napster.

The sound of the S5 could well be the location in the kitchen and I do enjoy what it does outside as the sub woofer gives it some muscle. My wife and I were listening to the same track on the S5 and the KEF iQ50 and it just sounded harsher.

Yeah, I wouldn't expect it to compete with something like that, to be fair.

My wife loves the Bass on the iQ50 as it is deep enough but is not intrusive (she is not a sub woofer fan). I just like the open, detailed midrange they deliver.

Aha, excellent, I like decent midrange.

As my speakers are set up in a L shape configuration because of the rubbish design of the living room the one near to the settee fits in just nicely and I don't have to worry too much about the sweet spot owing to the configuration of the tweeter to the woofer. I was first impressed with the iQ 30 as these really kicked out more bass but I have now grown accustomed to my discrete version.

The 30 gives more bass than the 50? Interesting, I guess the 50 does have a narrower cabinet though.

I really do love the Sonos setup and once I am up and running with the lossless files it will be tremendous. I have a good mesh network with 6 in total and the only time I had trouble was when we had a power cut and it took approx 3 hours to reset itself, so I am impressed with its robustness.

3 hours? Odd, it should only take a few minutes for them to come back, unless your router was having trouble sorting itself out, the ZPs will obviously get their IP addresses from that.

How long have you had yours out of curiosity and do you agree it is reliable?

Errr, getting on for 18 months now, I've only got two zones and to be honest at the moment I don't use one of them very often (my ZP120 only has speakers in the garden connected to it and it's not often garden weather!) but yes it's been utterly reliable, even in my house with its 2 foot thick stone walls which kill wireless signals stone dead! I do have to be very exact about where I position everything though. I'll be using the ZP120 more often soon though, the missus has instructed me that we're moving the living room into the dining room and vice versa, so the ZP90 (which is the wired zone) and amp will come into the dining room, the outdoor speakers will be attached to the B terminals on the amp, freeing up the ZP120 to move to a different room, along with whatever speakers I get round to buying for it (that's the other reason it doesn't get used much, I take forever to make a purchasing decision!). That move will also free up the zonebridge under the stairs (which is where the ZP90's going), so I'll use that elsewhere to bolster the mesh network. I'm looking at getting an S5 for the kitchen as well at some point.

 

[Anonymous]

shado:

My daughters bedroom is receiving a revamp next week so her system will sit nicely on a drawer unit. The speaker wire supplied with KEF system was pretty poor and so was replaced with Chord Carnival Silverscreen and has made a difference in sound quality.

What amp are the kef speakers connected to? How are the kef eggs for music, seen as they ony go down to 120hz?

Good setup anyway!

 

[shado]

Hi JG 333,

It is the Picoforte 1 system with an allegded 35 watts per channel. Cheryl Cole Fight for this love at medium to high volumes just totally lost cohesion. That annoying background beat throughout - is it a toy soldier beating a tin drum just sounded lifeless, now it sounds awful. Obviously down to the recording studio. Please I beg them don't do it again. It is fine on normal pop songs her favourite with the upgrade and acceptable on soft rock but cannot match the Diamonds, S5 or Zeppelin reference heavy metal, rock etc. For her iPod and Sonos it does the job and suits her tiny room.

 

[shado]

Hope you get your S5 soon Ihc because it works wonders outside. Hall & Oates sounds good with a subwoofer

 

[The_Lhc]

shado:Hope you get your S5 soon Ihc because it works wonders outside. Hall & Oates sounds good with a subwoofer

Is that a separate subwoofer? What do you use with it? I doubt I'd be getting one for it, I don't even have one on my home cinema system yet.

I've got other fish to fry though at the moment, the missus wants to swap the living room and dining room over, which is good in some ways, the dining room is a better shape for the home cinema and makes it easy to hide the kit in the cupboard under the stairs, plus we'll end up sitting a little closer to the TV (I've always felt we were just slightly too far away) but the floor is suspended floorboards and not solid concrete, with a cellar underneath it (kind of like a great big resonance cavity really!), and it means the Sky cables and master phone socket will need to be moved, which is all money.

And, obviously, it means the whole room needs to be decorated and underlaid and carpeted, which, I suspect, is the real reason she wants to do it. And she thinks there's an opportunity to buy new furniture as well, <fume>.

 

[Anonymous]

Way off topic, but I understand your username now lol - I too still have Dinky's UFO Shado 2 and Interceptor. Man what a blast from the past. Superb !

 

[shado]

I managed to get hold of the Passenger Eagle from Space 1999 and the Klingon Cruiser/Enterprise from E-Bay, also Dinky as my brother trashed them when he was growing up. The one I am after next is Thunderbird 2 but I will have to save some pennies up for that one! How many have you got The Force?

 

[Anonymous]

Blimey Shado...quite a few in storage from when I was a kid. Some are in ok nick, others are in well bad nick lol. I've got Thunderbird 2, as well as FAB1 with both Parker and Herself in it, and Joe 90's car and Sam's car plus all the usual Bond, Batman, Superman and Spiderman stuff then some obscure Dinky/Corgi/Matchbox tanks/cars etc.

I haven't clapped eyes on them in ages though ! This is nostalgia. 🙂