An interesting mixture of comments. I have ditched my exotic hi-fi, a mix of pre/power amplification two box cd setup, expensive cables and ridiculously expensive speakers. Ok it sounded outstanding but for a £3k outlay it ought to have. I was won over by accessability of digital and now all that graces my hifi stand is a squeezebox plugged directly into my power amps (all i kept from the old system along with the speakers). It basically sounds the same as my old system - and thats down to the speakers, and to a much lesser extent the amplifiers. Flac does sound better than ogg, but to a minute degree, and yes it is better than mp3, but only if you sit down and subject yourself to listening tests, which i dont really want to do. If all you are thinking while listening is "it could sound better...." then the listening experience is being marred in my opinion.
After finding myself obsessed by cables, plugs, power supplies, i decided it was time to abandon the quest for the elixir of sound quality (which essentially can never be obtained - not least with digital and compressed music) and listen to the music instead. I set a limit on bitrates to no lower that 192kbps (160 with ogg) and the sound equals the original as far as my ears are willing to scrutinise. Its certainly no less of an experience that listening to my old £3k worth of hifi. Basically, plug your squeezebox into the simplest amp and speaker setup you can get. You dont need equalizers or anything else that alters the source music - if you do, somthing is very wrong with the music. Any modest power amp (just use the SB's in built volume control) and quality bookshelf speakers will give you a superb listening experience which you can enjoy without becoming obsessed by frequency ranges, dynamics, resonance and all the other senseless things that us audiophiles, me included, all to easily take as the be all and end all of the audiophile listening experience. -- russj ------------------------------------------------------------------------ russj's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=4187 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=21173 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
