What stereo(s) do you listen to? What do you want? - Page 148

Great, thanks for the advice. Why does apartment stereo suck so much? You just mean need to keep volume moderate?

Yes, but the worse part is you can't have deep bass because it moves thru the walls like butter.

The beauty of top quality hi fi is that you hear all rages (hi and low) at very low volumes. In an apartment you're almost better with headphones. With most satellites the cutoff is around 50 or 60 hz while one of my sets of KEF reference 107's drop all the way to 20, outside of the human audible range.

You can play low volume in an apt but you need to spend $$$$ to get that bass response, but then you always have to play it low because anytime you crank it, then it goes right thru the walls.

Please forgive my 'hipsterness' for a minute here...

I admire all of your systems and would love to one day live in a beautiful home with an incredible sound system, but I probably never will and that's OK with me.

However, I do realistically plan on one day owning a vacation home (camping/hunting/fishing). This will be a very rustic place. I picture a single room with a cast iron wood stove and a lofted bed. One of my goals for this place will be to have a record player and a stack of metal records. There's nothing that pleases me more than to listen to some metal whilst sitting by a wood stove sipping a hot toddy, faithful pooch at my feet. I've dedicated myself to this plan and have slowly but surely started building my record collection based around this ideal.

With that said, I would like to start the search for the perfect system for this scenario. I am totally clueless and have absolutely no idea where to start. Should I start looking at vintage systems? Is there a good go-to pleb system that is recommended to cheapskate noobs?

As far as price range is concerned, is sub $1000 reasonable? Keep in mind, this stuff will potentially be left in a home without anyone in it for months at a time. I'd hate to show up one day with a great bottle of whiskey and a good book only to find that my expensive stereo has been stolen.

I'd appreciate any ideas or insight. Thanks.

Vintage doesn't necessarily suit your needs. See the post below and my response. It's basically the same thing for you, with a slightly lower budget.

Metal, I assume you listen pretty loud? I don't see 'Angel of Death' sounding good at volume level 1 so you need a little horsepower.


This NAD is cheap and reliable, sounds good for the $:

http://app.audiogon.com/listings/solid-state-nad-317-2013-02-08-amplifiers-78727-austin-tx


These Klipsch are pretty good for the $, reliable:

http://app.audiogon.com/listings/full-range-klipsch-forte-vintage-horn-loaded-speakers-2013-01-28-speakers-92591-temecula-ca


Turntable, get a Rega:

http://app.audiogon.com/listings/turntables-rega-p3-turntable-with-grado-silver-cartridge-2013-02-01-analog-22101


There you go, solid system for $1300 well aligned with your style of music.

That's excellent, thanks! Time to start the search.

This thread kills me.

>Amps having sound signatures.

>Buying vinyl and turntables, ever.

 

For an apartment, I'd recommend full-range options like Frugel-Horns or even OB; though, largely depends on the type of music being listened to.

 

 

Either 5.1 or 7.1

Sorry, I should have asked, what your budget?

What's wrong with this, exactly?

 

Sorry, bad troll blanket statement. I personally don't understand the logic behind supporting an inferior format, especially for the cost. But, some people enjoy the novelty, operating procedure, already have records, and so on. If quality sound reproduction is your goal, digital has the advantage.

Highly questionable post. I think you might do a bit of research.

Vinyl has a couple of faults but its clearly a better sounding medium than digital. The unfortunate thing about a record is that it degrades every time you play it.

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/question487.htm

 

I have heard very high end examples of both, and strongly disagree with this statement. Part of the challenge in defining the difference is A) accounting for the entire playback chain, B) accounting for synergy between components. Acknowledging those limitations, I think good digital sounds better than good vinyl...BUT, everyone hears differently so it is ultimately a matter of subjective taste. While this may be true for you, sweeping generalizations of this sort aren't justified.

 

But even more to the point - can we at least acknowledge that different people have different tastes, and avoid repeating the endless vinyl vs digital wars that bog down so many discussions of audio?

 

Re Apartment audio - I honestly don't know what you guys are talking about WRT full range being impossible. I've got Vandy 5As that push down to 20 Hz in an apartment and haven't had a single complaint playing a mix of jazz, classical, opera, blues, rock, and electronica.

 

Holy shit, that is one misinformed article. I suggest you might do a bit of better research. That piece doesn't even cite an author, probably out of embarrassment, and is just some random persons misguided notions.

 

Nyquist demonstrates that interpolating a sinusoidal wave through Redbook bit-depth reproduces an analog signal perfectly. You can't argue math.

 

Analog also has higher distortion, way worse snr, and consequently worse dynamic range.

 

Also, the aforementioned degradation of physical copy as you mention, along with a drastic difference in physical footprint to assemble a catalog of vinyl albums vs. a hard drive.

 

Some people enjoy the harmonic distortion that is added by things like tube amps/preamps, and vinyl pressings. This is subjective, however, and you can easily add the same effects digitally should you choose.

 

Objectively, digital can more faithfully reproduce recordings better than vinyl without introducing artifacts like higher THD.

 

Modern dithering and jitter management effectively abolish any perceivable drawbacks to digital.

 

 

 

It's hard for me to let it go when someone is calling the sky Green when it is in fact Blue. This isn't a subjective matter. Digital is objectively better in all aspects.

Shit what have I started.

I only asked coz I have a bunch of vinyl but no record player, was wondering what kind of reasoning you would've given for that statement.

This is it for me and my purposes.

I listen to digital format almost ALWAYS, but my intentions of buying a vinyl system for the specific purposes of putting it in a rustic cabin makes me feel a certain way about my music. I feel more actively involved and my attention is held more by the music. I can't really explain it, it's just how I feel about it.

If I hit play on a playlist of 20000 songs, I easily become distracted by other things.