Terry Hancock said:
Oh the joys of forums. Thank you everyone for your comments................and making my decision making considerably more difficult than it was before, lol. Now for the really hard bit and certainly in no order of preference. Firstly I would have gone for the cyrus immediately but for something in the back of my mind niggling away at me. Next, and thank you for feedback on the biggest spanner in the works, I have always heard the Meridian set up is excellent and along the lines of what I'm looking for though I've never heard one (and it does look gorgeous) but I've concerns a DVD/CD player can play music as well as a pure music player irrespective of original purchase price. Thirdly, and here's the real spanner in the works, I don't know enough about 'streaming' and how it works to know whether thats the right move for me or not. Considerations are.........I live in the sticks and my broadband downloads at .526mps, YES HALF A MEG(?), so streaming films etc is impossible unless I've a week to spare and I'm concerned the same would apply to music? Also at the ripe old age of 46 I don't understand the technology and having grown up with cd feel comfortable with it. Plus I don't know what other kit is required, ie for storage etc so I'm just a little bit scared of it I suppose. Back to you guys
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Take what you know about computors and divide it by 10, and that's me (in my 50s).
I went the Linn DS route, and the dealer was great and set the whole thing up....which is where I picked up the little I know.
The music is ripped (from CD) onto a NAS (network attached storage) using a laptop and can be controlled through laptop,iphone and pdas. It sounds more complicated than it is (I can work it so it's do-able), and there's good info on the Linn website, the Ripcaster website and any good Linn dealer.
The internet only gets used to find the metadata for the CDs being ripped using the ripping programs (eg DB Poweramp; EAC), streaming radio or downloading music.
It's a great way to organize and listen to music, including 24 bit HD audio (needs good internet to download). All I can tell you is that I'm glad I took the plunge, and it wasn't as difficult as I was expecting.
Do check it out.
Cno