Tuesday 2 August 2011

Nerd heaven…

Morning all. How are you today? I've had a very exciting morning. Breakfast with Neal before he returns to labour on Mark's plantation (we've taken over a friends abandoned garden: last night I hacked at it for hours, then dined on our first produce, a fine marrow). Then some actual academic work.

But the high point was rewarding myself with a new hi-fi system. The one I have is a 1985 Sony designed to look like a separates system, but it isn't really, and it's dying: blown speakers, skippy CD player, knacked turntable, broken cassette players. So I've been wandering round the web, looking for all the bits and pieces I need, while pretending to know about amps, pre-amps, drivers, woofers and tweeters. I'm sure I've got it all wrong, and I'll definitely need more cables, but for now I'm happy.

I went for a TEAC DAB tuner, Cambridge Audio CD player and amplifier, a Soundlab pre-amp (apparently needed to get a turntable going), a ProJect Essential turntable, and Q Acoustics bookshelf speakers. Any post hoc advice?

7 comments:

Grumpy Bob said...

I'm not in a position to make positive or negative criticism. I have a Naim Nait3 integrated amp and a Naim integrated CD player with Mission floor-standing speakers. I don't use a tuner any more, and now stream radio through a Logitech Squeezebox 3 (we had a portable DAB radio that never gave us good reception and then conked out). The Squeezebox also plays digital music files from my fileserver through the HiFi. Turntable is a Rega Planar 3.
I made the amp, speaker and turntable selection from a shortlist in a blind testing at a HiFi shop in Montrose!

The Plashing Vole said...

Wow. What a lovely system. I'm assuming you have rather a lot more money than me!

Grumpy Bob said...

At the time I was a Wellcome Senior Research Fellow and they gave me a rather juicy pay rise. Since then I joined another HEI in 1999 as a regular academic, with a considerable pay cut to normal levels, from which I have finally recovered!
Sadly, and despite my love of vinyl LPs, I find myself moving towards a digital music collection.

The Plashing Vole said...

Delightful. I still buy music on all formats, though the vinyl purchases have declined in recent years. It used to be £30 a week on LPs and 7", now it's a couple a month.

oldgirlatuni said...

The Q Acoustics bookshelf speakers are wonderful - I use them with my Technics separates (inherited I hasten to add - not the kind of thing that a self-funding PhD student can afford). I did buy the speakers, and I have to say it was money well spent.

Living in a basement flat, my key purchase was a Philips Streamium which allows me to access internet radio. Not only do I get all the main stations, if I feel the need, I can stream bluegrass directly from the Deep South through my stereo. I don't often feel the need.

I'm also moving over to digital music, transferring all my CDs onto an iPod. The main reason for this is storage - my CDs are on shelves above the picture rails, and are difficult to get down.

Grumpy Bob said...

I agree with oldgirlatuni on the internet streaming of radio (in my case through the Squeezebox and two Squeezebox Radios). I've ditched iPod in favour of a Cowon music player.

The Plashing Vole said...

I do like internet radio, but I've deliberately made my flat an Internet Free Zone because my life would be swallowed up by idle browsing.