Home Cinema stuff

[illusion]

ello,

I figure there might be some audio geeks on here that could help me out. I'm after a new home cinema amp and set of floorstanding speakers. Now, I'm just going to get 2 speakers as I am not really after the surround sound at the moment, but I figure if I go for a proper home cinema amp then it will allow me to go surround sound in the future. Mostly I am going to use it for playing music, from my PC, but also hook it up to TV/Sky/DVD.

Anyone have any suggestions on a good amp? I'd like it to be silver really, and also no more than about 200 quid. As for the speakers I'd like to keep under a 100 quid for them.

Cheers,

Dan
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[phantomtek]

https://www.bikechatforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=82316

What about those?

They seemed to attract a lot of interest and are within your price range

[Rookie]

Under £100 and your floorstanders will be absolutely awful. You should either look at investing more, or go for bookshelf speakers. Mission bookshelfs can be had for under £100, or Gale.

Amplifiers - £200 is a lot, for a 2 channel amp. Here's a link to a very nice silver Marantz.

https://www.richersounds.com/showproduct.php?cda=showproduct&pid=MARA-PM4001

Unless you're looking to upgrade to surround speakers later on (in which case, the amp will cost a lot more) you needn't spend loads on an amp, it will be overkill with £100 speakers. Plus a surround sound amp has less musical quality than a 2 channel amp; I have a system where I bi-wired the speakers, then hooked the surround sound up to a surround sound amp, and then led the front 2 speakers to a 2 channel amp. Best of both worlds.

It's like playing CDs on a DVD player. To get good results, you have to spend literally thousands (around £3000 if I remember correctly), it was the last high end TEAC DVD player that came out. In other words, try and get good 2 channel sound from a surround amp, you'll spend more than you would if you just bought 2 amps.

I'd look at going £150 on the amp, £150 on the speakers. And then invest £30 in decent cables, they're the heart of the system.

Here's another link, to some half decent bookshelf speakers.

https://www.richersounds.com/showproduct.php?cda=showproduct&pid=MISS-M70S-ASST

I've got the model down from these, the Mission M70, in a surround system, and I can safely say the sound clarity will be fantastic for £70. In time though, you'll want to buy a sub woofer (£50 or so) to increase the sound depth.

https://www.richersounds.com/showproduct.php?cda=showproduct&pid=KEF-Q-COMPACT-DKAPP

Alternatively, there's a more expensive option. You could get that, and get a cheaper amp. I think you'd end up with an overall better sound. It's better to squeeze the quality out of an OK amp, rather than have a very good amp hooked up to rubbish speakers. Speakers have come along in leaps and bounds over the years, so the difference between 70s speakers and todays speakers is just huge. Whereas you can hook what was a top end amp in the 70s, up to top end speakers today, and you'd get a truly brilliant sound. Make sense? Virtually no different from todays standards, despite what manufacturers say.

If you're hooked on floorstanders, you have to spend more than you're considering. Here's a link of what I think are the cheapest you should go for:

https://www.richersounds.com/showproduct.php?cda=showproduct&pid=TDL-STUDIO10-BCH

Notice they actually have a retail of £400, that is a great deal from Richer Sounds in particular. Plus you wouldn't need a sub.

Hope that helps.

[Rookie]

[colin1]

richer sounds has an ebay shop where they sell off old stock.

some real bargains pop up

however, its not that rare for it to turn out to be faulty, in which case you return it to your nearest richer sounds store for a refund. so check it works the day it arrives

i got a rather nice and cheap plasma tv with a bit of screen burn (was described as such on ebay)

https://search.ebay.co.uk/_W0QQfgtpZ1QQfrppZ25QQsassZrichersoundsonline

rather than spending £30 on hifi speaker cable, get mains wiring cable from your local DIY store. This thick wiring will let current flow through much more easily than thin weedy wiring cos its so thick, and its easy to hide under the carpet.

decent interconnects between hifi components are worth getting tho
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[divuk83]

[Rookie]

[colin1]

its about conductivity.

you can have a thin wire which has low impedance and has high conductivity, or you can have a very thick wire

you need a higher grade of copper to get similar conductivity in a thin cable

you can have the same conductivity in a wire of lower grade copper if its thick enough

its a similar thing with speakers

its fairly easy for a speaker with a big bass driver to make big bass, but you need expensive speakers if you want big bass out of a small box

so basically dont pay over the odds just to have things small and maintain the sound quality.
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[Annabella]

[colin1]

if you limit yourself to stuff you can try out in the shop, you wont be trying last years premium stock that they are selling off at budget prices.

at this pricepoint, you get a fair indication of sound quality from comparing build quality

loook at the quality of the speaker terminals. dont go for spring clip ones

last years £300 speaker going for £150, will sound better than this years £150 speaker

ebays a good bet too, as some people like to replace their stero frequently to get the latest kit. you can then buy their old stuff for next to nothing and it will be better than what your money could buy new

the problem with bookshelf speakers is you need decent stands to get the best out of them and you might aswell spend that on floorstanders.

finally, you are thinking of spending £200 on the amp, and £100 on the speakers, I think its better to make it £150, £150, or even £100 on the amp and £200 on the speakers. Its easy to get a decent amp for not very much, but I think its worth spending a bit more on the speakers.
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[illusion]

Thanks for all the help guys. I'm most interested in 2 channel sound for the moment i.e playing CD's and MP3's off my PC, and not too worried about DVD surround sound. In which case I'll go for a 2 channel amp if they are musically better than AV amps?

Rookie, if I wanted to add another amp later to get 5.1 you say I can do that and still use the 2 channel amp aswell? How would that work because dont you take the optical/coax output from the DVD player straight into the AV amp?

I definately want floorstanders so I'll split the budget roughly £150 for the amp and £150 for the speakers, that should do the trick. Those TDL speakers look pretty sweet, and there is a Richer Sounds not far from where I work so I'll have to nip in and have a look.
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[colin1]

if you are buying from the shop rather than online, definitly go in with some of your cds and try out a few different setups to see what you like
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[divuk83]

If you haven't got room for floorstanders go for stand mount speakers and a sub. Do not get a cheap sub as they are slow and crap and sound awful.

Yamaha make surround amps that work with 2 channel amps. IE they just add on a centre and rear channels. I have a Dennon AV amp which is faily musical for a 5.1amp, it also allows me to plug my PC into the coax input on the amp so the PC does not process any audio.

My advice with Hi-fi stuff is to ignore hi-fi mag reviews and go our and demo the stuff and buy the kit you like the sound of. When demoing stuff take a few of your favourite CD's with you and play they same few tracks on all the kit you test so its a fair comparison and also so you can see how much better your music will sound.

Dave

[Annabella]

I think you should look at getting a set of Quad electro statics.

https://www.hificorner.co.uk/assets/images/products/esl989.jpg


That's a window in the background by the way - You'll need a bloody massive house to fit them in first though!
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[illusion]

[nrml76]

[nrml76]

[Annabella]

[nrml76]

I dont like the sound of vinyl or valves. It's just harmonic distortion of music. I can understand why some people like them though; fair enough. They make excellent eye candy, nothing more imo. Give me an accurate rendition of voices and instruments with accurate timing anyday!
If you are planning on building your own speakers, https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?forumid=22 is the place to go. No better resource in the entire world! https://www.wilmslow-audio.co.uk/ are probably the best place in the UK to buy materials and parts from. They also sell some okay kits, which need almost no knowledge of speaker design to put together. Be warned! Speaker building is a highly addictive hobby!

[Annabella]

Except that fundamentally analogue is far more accurate than digital with no loss of high and low frequencies.
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[colin1]

analogue is better if you have expensive equipment, but digital gives good performance on ridiculously cheap equipment with no noise and is more convenient.

the sound quality of vinyl is better than cd, and the sound of cd is better than mp3 at 192k or 128k, but i have got lazy since I transferred my cds onto mp3, and now i dont even listen to cds let alone vinyl.
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[Rookie]

That's why I'm always confused when I get MP3s at 400+kb/s. It's not like they can get better quality than the CD the song originated from.

The difference between digital and analogue is simply that digital uses binary code, so every sound in the song is on/off. Whereas analogue has an infinite number of sounds between on/off. The result is a very crisp, clear sound for digital music, and a soft, fuzzier tone to analogue music. But the analogue music is more faithful to the original recording, I think.

[nrml76]