show us your HiFi

cosmicma said:
i used to love my hifi and had a passion for quality since the 70's but over the last 10 years or so iv'e just not had the time or opportunity just to sit down and listen
i still have some half decent equipment but it's sadly going to waste it just doesn't get listened to as it should be
i did a lot of chopping and changing through the 80's but my listening tastes were different back then i finally settled with meridian cd / amplification and kef reference model 4's speakers which iv'e had for some years now





iv'e considered getting another pair of mono blocks and running the speakers active but considering the little use they get nowadays the idea has been put on the back burner but it might happen one day :)
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Loved the KEF reference speaker system that was setup in my local audio excellence shop but ended up purchasing definitive technology bipolar speakers for my AV system
 
TonyHall said:
I used to be 'into' hi-fi (as much as my meagre income would allow), then I decided to end the upgrading, fiddling, twiddling and tweaking and simply buy some bits I could live with and just leave it all alone (except for buying CDs).

So, sticking with the thread title, here's a snap from 7 years ago...

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Love Naim products. Remember going to a private invitation only evening at a local hotel for invited customers to listen to the new Naim products. Lucky I left my credit card at home that night. lol
 
piggin said:
Love Naim products. Remember going to a private invitation only evening at a local hotel for invited customers to listen to the new Naim products. Lucky I left my credit card at home that night. lol
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Still got my old Naim CD player working and still in my set up,unfortunately the amp went years ago :(
 
About 10 years ago I got into hifi in a big way after a friend lent me his musical fidelity Xa2 amp, I then spent a fortune looking for that elusive sound and guess what, I never found it in the expensive stuff but I did discover some real gems along the way.

My favourite bits of kit were a Densen B100 amp, Pathos Classicone Mk2 amp, Neat elite speakers and project rpm5 turntable. I never understood the fuss around Naim and Sugden from a sound perspective although do admire what they achieved.

These days AV rules the roost so I have an Arcam/PMC combo and love it!
 
Gsrai said:
I then spent a fortune looking for that elusive sound and guess what, I never found it in the expensive stuff but I did discover some real gems along the way.
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Very true. I also spent a lot of money on HiFi & AV systems. Found the law of diminishing returns held very true with hi end equipment. Also think 'emperors new cloths' come to mind when you speak to some people about the new equipment they have purchased.
 
The law of diminishing returns is true especially in hifi world.

I remember getting suckered into the interconnect and speaker cable game, after many years I finally settled on £3/m van damme blue (if it's good enough to be used at gigs that's fine by me) and some chord Crimson interconnects.

I suppose the upside is that if you buy secondhand then you don't lose much on hifi (thank god).

My Atacama speaker stands were probably my best investment.
 
Second hand prices are :banana:


Makes me cry to think I spent £5K on a CD/DVD player that can now be purchased on eBay for £500.
As for cables, thats another black hole to throw money at. I spent lots & lots on Chord with my most expensive cable being a Nordost Moonglo Digital Interconnect which I paid hundreds of pound for.
 
This thread takes me back to the early 70's and one of the other guys in my year at school who had more money than a few of us put together showed us his Quad rig with flat electrostatic speakers (I think that was the technology) and as his parents were out showed off by turning the volume up and anything above a third volume was so loud it was deafening and it seemed like every window in the house was vibrating!

But the sound at 'normal listening' levels was very good.
 
I used to buy what hifi religiously. Now i take it with a bucket of salt. The who upgraded special edition nonsense was wearing thin on me. I doubt there have been much improvements in the last 30yrs and the last 15yrs virtually nothing. Go and buy a 90's £10k setup on ebay/gumtree for £1500!

I do not buy there 30% x 30% x 30% source and x 10% cables either. particularly when buying a budget system.
 
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It was certainly a great way to spend a lot of money.
My fave purchases were an old Cambridge CD16 CD player before Richer Sounds bought the brand it sounded fantastic with my Musical Fidelity E600 Amp
The remote didn't work and the display was dicky but you turned that off anyway as it sounded better remember.

Also Audioquest interconnects second hand off ebay for buttons of the new price :-)
 
rjbell said:
I used to buy what hifi religiously.
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I did the same & read it from cover to cover.
God it was expensive trying to keep up. Lucky I now have cheap hobbies like photography. ;)
 
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I'm another who "used" to love his hifi, not the real high end stuff just stuff I could afford and mostly from Richer sounds, over the last 5 years I have sold nealry everything inc all my cd's (after ripping them) now I'm down to a set of TDL's and a yamaha amp and just stream all my music from spotify,
how times have changed.
 
Some nice kit here,

here's something I built myself, it hasn't been powered on for a couple of years, so badly needs a service, basically I just need to take it apart, clean it and re-bias the valves

Its two mono blocks using 4x EL34 valves in push pull configuration on each block, ECC82/83 preamp valves.

_DSC0096_zpstxtz6ykz.jpg
 
Rocking a Rotel 820AX amp, and a Arcam RDac for most things, paired with currently, Monitor Audio BX2 speakers. For the price, it sounds incredible.

I'm a Recording/Audio Engineer by trade, but my studio setup consists of a pair of Genelecs, some Yamahas, and a pair of passive Avatone Cubes. But thats in a fully treated room, so slightly different :)
 
I still have my Mission Cyrus 3 Integrated Amplifier with extra PSU and Mission 751 speakers which I've had for over 20 years now. I sold my Arcam Alpha 5 CD player (slightly knackered) and Arcam Black Box DAC 50 some time ago.

Like many others, due to young family etc I wasn't getting the chance to use it much but for years now I have had the TV routed through the Amp and Speakers. I've done this via various methods over the years but latterly I'm using a SONOS Connect with the Cyrus set-up which works brilliantly, it makes you realise just how bad built in TV speakers are. This is also used for music streaming, not purest hi-fi I know but the domestic convenience can't be beaten.

The only regret I have is selling the Black Box 50 DAC which I could of happily used with the SONOS Connect.

When I bought them, the Mission Cyrus 3 and PSU cost about £800. I'm dreading the day they die as I will be hard pushed to justify replacing them with anything as good.
 
piggin said:
Love Naim products. Remember going to a private invitation only evening at a local hotel for invited customers to listen to the new Naim products. Lucky I left my credit card at home that night. lol
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I bought a TV from a guy in Birmingham, he had a naim HiFi / home cinema with some speakers that stood 5 ft high

I said I bet they kick out some sound, yes they do but then they should for £10,000 , what for the HiFi , no just the speakers

They like to brag in their sigs and he had it all listed so I googled it, £35,000

25 years ago I bought an arcam system , I asked the dealer how much I could spend if money was no object, oh £100,000 is easy to spent on top end HiFi
 
I was big into HiFi 10-15 years ago & the money that some people spent was ridiculous. (I spent £5K on CD/DVD player, £3K on pre amp & £4K on an amp)
If you consider what I spend to what others put into it, my equipment was classed as CHEAP.
I befriended the manager of the local Audio Excellence & spent many hours in the shop 'hanging out' & the number of people who just walked in off the street & spent telephone numbers on their systems was just unbelievable.
I remember that one of the customers had a standing order for a new stylus for his record player every six months (if he used the record player or not). The cost of the cartridge was 1K & the boys gave him £100 for the old one. The boys in the shop would take it in turns to give the customer the £100 for the second hand unit. I once asked about the ethics of this & my mate said that he knew what they were doing & even offered to give them the old unit for nothing but they wanted to give him something for it.

Money + sense = ?
 
In a blind listening test most people wouldn't know the difference between a budget system, mid-range or high end system, most of it is marketing BS

For my AV system I use a Sony STR-DB940 and Q Acustics 5.1 speaker system.
It sounds decent, the amp can be tweaked to suit the room it's in and the best bit is, it only cost £250 for the whole lot, epic win :-)
 
Rob 80386 said:
In a blind listening test most people wouldn't know the difference between a budget system, mid-range or high end system, most of it is marketing BS
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I've been so tempted to say something similar, but it very quickly gets more contentious than religion or politics.

:exit:
 
OldCarlos said:
I've still got (tuner in use daily) my old JVC separates system that I bought about 30 yrs ago. Don't use the double tape player or turntable these days though. :) I think I paid around £250 then.


How about this:


:LOL:

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Looks like a nice basic set up.......
 
Rob 80386 said:
In a blind listening test most people wouldn't know the difference between a budget system, mid-range or high end system, most of it is marketing BS

For my AV system I use a Sony STR-DB940 and Q Acustics 5.1 speaker system.
It sounds decent, the amp can be tweaked to suit the room it's in and the best bit is, it only cost £250 for the whole lot, epic win :)
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A friend works part time as a sound engineer in the recording studio's of south Wales. Now he tells me that if he doesn't set the cables up in a certain piece of kit correctly the copper molecular structure is not aligned correctly & the sound will be off.
Personally I think this is hog wash but can I tell the difference between a £1K system & £10K then yes but can I tell the difference between £10K and a £50K set up. Then the answer is NO but if I just put £50K into a new setup then it would be the best ever. ;)
 
There was a hoohah over on one of the forums when someone arranged a blind listening test with cables. Turned out they were identical apart from the sleeve colour...

I think one of the hifi mags always does blind listening tests. WHF are awful. They just give 5* to whoever advertises with them.

I buy classics that were an arm and a leg new for a fraction of list price and keep them forever and have them serviced. What was good then still sounds good now.
 
Rob 80386 said:
In a blind listening test most people wouldn't know the difference between a budget system, mid-range or high end system, most of it is marketing BS
:)
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You've obviously never taken the blind test, and if you have, you must be tone deaf
People that aren't into photography would say the same thing about cameras.
 
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Bobsyeruncle said:
You've obviously never taken the blind test, and if you have, you must be tone deaf
People that aren't into photography would say the same thing about cameras.
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It's plenty of studies done if you google. He said most not all.

Its also rather difficult to get a accurate blind test set up. Adjusting for levels etc.

Like you say most people wouldn't be able to tell a photo taken with a kit lens or a pro lens either.
 
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Doesn’t matter how much you spend, how deep your pockets are or how much you like to brag, it all comes down to have you have your ears calibrated ;)
 
I certainly don't agree with comments like you can't tell the difference between a mini or decent separates as you certainly can.
However I do think your ears get to a point when the sound quality isn't better its just different. I used to love the Musical Fidelity kit as it just seemed to excel in vocals and strings and that kind of sounds but when I got into a lot of the exotic trance of the day like Sasha and Digweed the MF stuff just sounded bloated and slow. I went and auditioned some Meridian gear and BAM it was all back tight and massively musical. I think its all about the type of soundstage you are looking for and that's what high end hifi delivers. It allways used to be LINN for classical.
 
piggin said:
A friend works part time as a sound engineer in the recording studio's of south Wales. Now he tells me that if he doesn't set the cables up in a certain piece of kit correctly the copper molecular structure is not aligned correctly & the sound will be off.
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That might just be the best pseudoscience I've ever heard...
 
robhooley167 said:
That might just be the best pseudoscience I've ever heard...
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There was so much odd bunkum in the magazines of the time, like balancing your turntable legs on bean cans :-)

You could even buy replacement feet for your HIFI seperates !
 
Funnilly enough the one thing that worked for me in a truly massive way was using a high grade computer UPS for providing power to my stuff to the point where I used to take it to a friends house for listening sessions. It was a 900VA thing weighed a ton, it was just full of massive capacitors to smooth out and provide reference grade power.
 
Rob 80386 said:
In a blind listening test most people wouldn't know the difference between a budget system, mid-range or high end system, most of it is marketing BS
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The only time I've been totally underwhelmed by a system was in the 80s, a friend bought a sharp hifi from a catalogue and it sounded great, i couldn't afford that so bought something cheaper from one of those quality makes like fidelity, amstrad or bush and it sounded like being shouted at by lemmy but without the guitars

straight back

These speakers are monitor audio, I have some mission too and there's a marked difference in the quality of the sound
 
Speakers is where the big difference is. And phono carts. And the room.

What makes me smile more than anything is people spending a lot of money on speakers and then stuffing them up against the wall.
 
simon ess said:
Speakers is where the big difference is. And phono carts. And the room.

What makes me smile more than anything is people spending a lot of money on speakers and then stuffing them up against the wall.
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Some stuff is designed to work well up against walls, MY old TDL-3s have huge front ports and no rear ports.
However if you have a speaker with a rear port then they do need to be away from walls.
 
Oh, I agree. It's amazing how many people don't take that into account though.

And it's about rather more than port location BTW.

My speakers have front ports but are way, way, better about 1.5 metres from the walls.

Speaker placement is critical.
 
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simon ess said:
Speakers is where the big difference is. And phono carts. And the room.

What makes me smile more than anything is people spending a lot of money on speakers and then stuffing them up against the wall.
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I agree speakers make the most difference. What hifi disagree though and say they are the least.

Speaker cabinet making is where all the budget goes when buying a speaker under £200. The components are very cheap. Some websites suggest just 10% of the cost, so £20 worth of components.

I would love to do an experiment testing what hifi's current favourite £1000 budget setup, with a Chinese t-amp with built in dac for £50 a £20 dvd player and spend the rest on speakers. I wonder what would sound best?
 
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In my last house I had a small dining room in which I had a Chinese T-amp, a CD player I was given and a pair of Spendor SP1s I got off e-bay for £350.

It was superb.
 
I took my amp with its usb dac over to my dads with a laptop playing flac files, and my monitor audio bx1. Playing around with every combination with his setup and mine. The biggest improvement by a mile was replacing my monitor audio with his epos m5's.
 
simon ess said:
Speakers is where the big difference is. And phono carts. And the room.

What makes me smile more than anything is people spending a lot of money on speakers and then stuffing them up against the wall.
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Linns like to be stuffed against a wall :D So did my missions as they have rear ports. 8 inches from the wall was the magic amount. Never in a corner though...

Friend had some ESLs and they have to be in the room and several feet away from any walls. Would drive even a music obsessive like me mad!
 
I still have my B&W CDM2s with the Atacama SE24s and speaker wire, also some interconnects.
Currently wired up to a small mini system in my man cave, we plan to move house in the next year or two and I will be making a mini music room in there probably using an all in one system.
Maybe Arcam Solo
 
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