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speaker cable is doing a similar job to mains cable - which is why mains cable works very well for this purpose, guitar cables are more similar to microphone cables
hifi buffs are highly vulnerable to voodoo, and cabling is their weakest spot. A shop will have you paying £50 for an RCA-RCA cable almost 1cm thick, but if you pop the lid off the CD player they are recommending it for - the internal cable is tiny and thin
I have not met any professional sound engineers who believe a word of it - my mate used mains wire with soldered XLRs for speakers
RCA-RCA does not require much to get right, compared to guitar cables and mic cables. Digital interconnects should be obviously either functional or not - do they look flimsy or not? An optical cable either works or not.
Thanks.
Hi-fi is totally subjective, just like band gear. I can say I like a particular set-up, but someone else may not, so I'm going to give some basic thoughts:-
For what it's worth, my kit (which is now obsolete) consists of a Meridian CD transport + DAC, Talk Electronics pre-amp, and pre-amp power supply plus 4 Talk Tornado 5 power amps, and Ruark Excalibur speakers. Total cost of the new kit with the custom-made stand, cable, and interconnects would have been £18,000. But I bought secondhand for 60% of that price. Am I pleased with it? Absolutely, yes, I think it's awesome.
As for the missus, well sorry TTony, can't help you there, but if the above helps, then that's good.
Nil Satis Nisi Optimum
I used to be heavily into hifi at one point.
I still adore the Acoustic Energy AE1 bookshelves. Others may be more up to date but for me they're the Hiwatt Fane of Hifi speakers- clarity, detail, warmth.
*An Official Foo-Approved guitarist since Sept 2023.
Former massive HiFi nut here, probably too much and if I had as much money back then as I do today I would have spent way more than necessary to get the sound that I and most people would be happy with. I went to as far as making my own interconnectors, Kettle leads and have 2 pairs of VDH IC that has a carbon core?!?! WTF, these were £120 for 0.5m....I must be bonkers.
My advice is get secondhand or Ex-demo gear. Not Ex-Demo from Richard Sounds but although Richard Sounds is a good place to get end of line out just been replaced models at a bargain price, especially for Recievers, not so much stereo amplifiers or higher end speakers.
I have some old B+W 602 S2, I power them with a Sony Receiver at the moment purely because I take the 5.1 feature over stereo in the front room but I have a Musical Fidelity X-A2 in the bedroom. A really good British made amp, pretty much no features, not even a remote. PSU is external to keep the RF interference away from the unit, just input select and volumn knob, sounds amazing.
If you end up buying Bookshelves, do put them on proper stands and not bookshelves. You can always remedy the bass or lack of later on with a sub. I have a BK XLS400 sub for my 5.1, it has a 10inch driver, down firing. The thing weighs about 60lbs, it can make the sofa rumble at low volume, it is that deep. But the best thing about it is that it looks like a side table, the right height and everything. Very wife friendly.
http://www.bkelec.com/hifi/sub_woofers.htm
It's a very simply webpage as they are people who make subs for bigger brands then rebadge them. With BK sub you are essentially buying direct from the builder, comes with no badges or pretty packaing bar a cardboard box, although should you go for the Monolith sub, it comes on a pallet as it weighs 48kg.
For amps I like Musical Fidelity, Cyrus are good, there is also Naim, but you do need to demo them, different amps pair well or better with some speakers more than others. Take your own music with you and sit down and play songs that you know inside out.
Speakers are always a problem. Next time you go into someones house....have a look to see where the speakers are. Chances are they will not be in "free space". They will have their backs to a wall.
Now......If you ask a Hi-fi magazine or a Hi-fi shop if the speakers you fancy are fussy on placement....they will probably tell you not to worry and to put them about a foot from the back wall. Of course - they will assume that there is no other furniture in the room other than your listening chair and that the speakers are nowhere near any "corners". If you do have furniture, and you do have carpets, and you do have books on shelves, these things will add bass.
So my first advice would be to be a bit wary of floorstanders. Even small floorstanders. If the bass takes on a life of it's own because you have foolishly bought the wrong kind of furniture, and your wife has foolishly placed the furniture in the wrong parts of the room, the net result is fairly obvious. You have now "lost" one third of your cd collection. The good news is - the remaining third which are light on bass will now get lots of playtime. Small "bookshelf" loudspeakers produce lots of bass and if it is not quite enough you can always push them towards the corners. I think buying speakers new is essential for 2 reasons. First - there are now some mass produced giant killing designs for £200 that sound more like £500. And second....you could easily get the too much/not enough bass judgement horribly wrong , and a "proper" hi-fi dealer will let you change them.
If I were buying today I think I would get the Monitor Audio BX2 (£230) even if you buy an amp in a class or 2 higher (see below).
For the amp I would buy second hand. Older integrated amps like the Meridian 551 were expensive when they were new. Maybe a grand. Now they go for £300 or less on ebay. Is it too smooth sounding? No it isn't - don't be silly.
Supposedly the B&W 603 S3 cones were better.
Them 2050i QAcoustics are supposed to be quite good new. Look nice too.
The B&W 603 S2's will fetch over 200 or near abouts and probably will have been passed about, you can do a lot better for another £50 or £100 and get something alot better from an audiophile, or just buy new.
In general, I find the more the name of a floorstanding speaker sounds like a car, whilst it also includes a precious metal in the title you generally can't go wrong. B&W is close. RS8 Gold's are another example
Floorstanders do have tiny speakers in them though, this is true.
My music:- https://soundcloud.com/hubobulous