Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms HiFi - the other addiction!

Do you not have to have extremely good hearing to make it all worth while?

One of my cousins spent a fortune on high end kit and to be honest I could tell the difference between my mid priced set-up and his but not that much and certainly not enough to spend more money. I suppose if I won the lottery I would but for the moment happy with my Sony kit, Walkman and PURE radios

Mind you I am a bit of a luddite when it comes to wine as well.



Pete

Pete,
to a degree, yes. A combination of goodish hearing and training is needed: SWMBO used to play the Oboe in vrious amateur orchestras and knows what she expects to hear.

But if you cn't hear the difference save your money.

Like you with wine anything more than about £10.00 a bottle is totally lost on me, I can't tell the difference beween £10.00 and £40.00, I have a very poor sense of smell and taste.
But I can tell the difference between cheap fizz and good champaine ony because the good stuff isn't as acidic and doesn't give me heart-burn!

I have a Quad Pre, Power amp and radio unit, Dual turntable in addition to some lower end Cambridge amp, DAC, CD player and radio units + Mission and KEF speakers and they are all gathering dust in the loft along with a few thousand CDs.

These days I have all my music stored on a Mac Mini server unit shared over a Sonos and Airplay network through B&W MM1 and Zeppelins + SONOS 5 and Soundbar with Sub and 2 SONOS 3 units in 5.1.

These responses strike me as odd, pareticularly the sonos ones. I've always seem music and musical taste as very personal almost private things, and listening to music at home is something I want to do on my own. Big hifi systems and distributed ones like Sonos imply that everyone has to listen to the same music at the same time at the same volume levels. How can that please everyone?

The beauty of SONOS and airplay to a lesser extent is that you can run each zone seperately. You can fill the entire house with music, limit it to a single room or play different music in each room. It works very very well and though the speakers aren't the very best they aren't half bad when you pair them up.

We have an older set of 4 aqsound speakers and a wireless base station. The sound is not hifi but it is not bad and allows the same audio to be heard all over the house. We don't use it all that often but it is nice when you have to move about the house a bit. The SONOs system seems like a much more sophisticated version of the same thing and I will certainly consider it when it comes to replacing the current system.

Just to wave a stick...

Sonos = Musak for the home?
It isn't HiFi, but it might be nice...

You are right up to a point but the gap has been significantly closed in recent years illustrated by all my high end stuff now sitting in the loft.

The convenience of digital media far outweighs the negatives as far as I'm concerned assuming a quality bit rate of the file rips and the quality and clarity of some of the new wireless speaker systems is very very good.

I was totally blown away yy the quality of my little B&W MM1 computer speakers that I use in my study. Even without a sub they are a true HiFi speaker in my opinion. The Sonos stuff less so but if you pair for stereo seperation is is hard to fault them. I have a playbar, 2 play 3s and a Sub hooked up to my TV for 5.1 and also stream music to that room and it sounds phenominal.

That would please SWMBO and is the source of domestic discontent. She likes continuous musak of the sort played in supermarkets and at low volumes. I like rock belting out.Incompatible.

It is funny how things change. The comment about sharing and common music. I understand from my siblings and customers (Universities) that Sonos has become a new challenge/benefit.

For those that don't know the Sonos it is a speaker/amplifier and wireless meshing music player.

In the University dorms it has become highly popular as you can have a "block" party by making them all mesh and play the music at the same time to create a big sound system. This also makes it a BIG problem in rented accommodation in town for groups of students !

It may not be the highest quality like traditional British HiFi (QUAD, Naim, Linn etc) but for general use it is very very convenient. It is also great for garden parties where you can tweak them into PA mode using an iPhone etc.

Load all your music onto a single computer (retired laptop or some such) and share it to a variety of Sonos devices in the various rooms. People can just load whatever they want from the server and play it. You can then hide all the media to save space and make the SWMBO a happy person.

It is dependant on the quality of the digital source. If you use low resolution MP3 files it can sound pants. If you load your own in lossless format it stands up quite well until you put it up against a BIG HiFi system where it does flatten.

It is a very compact "speaker/amp/connection" device which makes it very convenient for placement and space saving. Not cheap mind you.

If anyone needs help I do have some background here and am happy to share.