Stereo - what's your rig?
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After years of living an MP3 life, I've decided to get serious again with my records, CD's and so forth. I stumbled upon a wicked McIntosh 250 power amp
and I'm looking for a nice (hopefully tube) pre-amp to go with it. I'll soon get a new cartridge and stylus for my good old Technics turntable and I'm in the process of getting a pair of JBL L80 speakers.
So I'm curious to hear from you all what you use to play those records and cd's and audio files. I'm tempted by a wireless network device to stream from my computer (I'm also in the process of re-ripping my cd's to lossless, rather than MP3 format) to this system, but I have no idea what to get.
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I have a Mac mini with an hdmi cable to my receiver, which is high as you can go in the pioneer line until you hit Elite. Old Paradigm mains and JBL for center and rear. Sony sub. Vizio TV and Apple Bluetooth keyboard and Magic Trackpad. Harmony One remote, PS3, Con-crap Cable HD DVR. I think that's it.
Nothing fancy and not a tube in sight, good enough for now though.
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I'd go tubes and vinyl if I had the cash. I stupidly chose the cd route all those years ago. Big regret. I get decent enough sound out of my Sonneteer Byron Cd player, Sonneteer Alabaster solid state amp, Penaudio Rebel2 + Chara speakers and all Gutwire Chime cable (slight cable overkill) though.
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CD player and Amp (the one shown is the baby brother the Campion…they look exactly the same though, just get more output with the Alabaster) They're a british designed and made set. Sturdy build quality and very good sound for the price. It's a nice set-up...but as with tattoos, clothes, Mountain bikes etc etc....always want that lil bit more:)
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I have a nice Onkyo receiver + Bose speakers, that I picked up around 15 years ago now. I mostly stream internet radio @ 192Kbps via Sonos which works really nicely/practically. I start playing music before I get out of bed via my iPhone with no fear of passive speakers being on all night.
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Totally a sonos family. Playbar and Sub in the Library, two Play 5s in our bedroom, two Play 3s in the den, and about to go for a Sonos Amp and switch for my pre-wired house speakers. Love the system.
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Yeah, we've been using Rdio for a year or so. Pretty sure it's similar to Spotify. That coupled with Sonos is such a great setup. Plus, the "add to queue" feature is super awesome. When we have people over, we get them all the app and connect it, so it becomes an awesome crowd sourced jukebox.
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Yeah in addition to the gigabytes and gigabytes and gigabytes of music that I have on my NAS (mainly live bootlegs), I do a lot of Spotify from the mini on the TV/entertainment system. I wish that Spotify had a visualizer like iTunes does, it would be really nice to have something cool on the TV during the music. I've been known to put iTunes on and play stuff on it with the volume turned all the way down just for the visualizer while Spotify's playing, but that doesn't coordinate with the music.
Can't recommend a Mac mini HTPC enough. It's easy for anyone to use, powerful, flexible, and I don't have to worry about the ridiculous restrictions that services like Hulu plus place on devices (what business is it of theirs what kind of a computer I'm connecting from, I don't understand why some content's not available for example on an iPad versus a regular computer. Idiotic).
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In an ideal world I'd love a pair of stacked Quad ESL 57s…
Unfortunately I don't have the space to fit them in.
What I'm planning on getting is a Sonos sound bar set-up when I get sorted into a new place. That will hopefully play nicely with my TV, and give me something that does music and movies pretty well. Then I'll just have to rip my CDs into a nice, lossless format and put them all on a server.
