Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

Right now I'm doing Hawkwind - Space Ritual. It's not one of the easy ones!

'Not one of the easy ones' - not sure what you mean, like you have to make some production-type decisions?

It's around 2 hours of pretty much continuous music. It takes time to go through it and cut it at the appropriate intervals to make 17 tracks and if you lose concentration you can end up in a mess.

An easy album is 8 tracks all separated by some silence.

Ah right, it's been a while!

have a look at your home broadband router. It may well have a USB socket into which you can plug a USB hard drive

It does, but only one and it turns out i’ve already plugged a dongle for my smart thermostat into it. FFS.

USB Hub is your friend. Make sure it is USB 2 or 3 for speed.

It may also need to be powered (if your external HDD isn't).

True dat

Well my saga culminated in me getting some Bowers and Willing 607s. Less than I'd thought I'd need to spend to be happy. I used to own some P7 headphones and these have a very similar house sound. Lovely little size, kept the Mrs happy and they are admittedly a much better size for my apartment. At 25% off retail for them (ex display) I'm very pleased. Now to find some stands that aren't ugly...

I have an old boom box that has phono in is there away of switching it to line/aux in with out opening up the insides for a rewire?

I think a tweeter has gone in my Tannoys.

Fucking boo.

My fucking Yamaha is playing up again. Lost a channel in the phono stage. Fffff...

Cheers the comprehensive reply! Yeah I feared no matter what I bought it wouldn't be a silver bullet for the situation and suspected the problem lies in the mastering... twats.

Will go have a listen to that Yamaha, its only for TV so doesn't matter too much about how music sounds.

Oh, pants. Sympathies.

Also, sorry to say it but your budget probably won't even stretch to covering the NAS, let alone any drives to go in it or client devices

Hiya, so I reckon a NAS would be a Good Thing. Anything massively wrong with this one for instance?... £300

Synology DS218J 2TB 2 Bay NAS Solution | Installed with 2 x 1TB Western Digital Red Drives https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B077DD68MT/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_Ycw3CbWWB4MGE

i need to get multimeter out, as it could be a crossover or a bad connection, but the parts are NLA - it could be a £300 fix! ouch

I have a synology and I'm stoked about it.

Amazing NAS.

Woo. It does not appear to be a tweeter issue.

Airplay 2 ... Files remain on iMac, stream to iPad, digital out to DAC (no dock required).

Ok I done a bit of digging and this doesn’t seem to be possible. You can stream from an iPad, iPhone etc, but only to supported receiver devices e.g. active speakers, smart TVs etc. So I don’t think this option would be a cheap fix.

Here’s where I’m at.

First up I get the benefits of a NAS over an islanded hard drive. No point trying to jury-rig a cheap NAS just to take advantage of my existing 5TB HDD. It’ll be inferior, and it’d be sensible to use that anyway for backup, even if I am using a RAID setup on the NAS.

So, i’ll buy a NAS and rip my CD collection to it. I will point my client device(s) at the NAS. Right-o.

A 2TB NAS (£300) and Sonos Connect (£350) is gonna stand me at £650. If I want to add extra rooms it’s easy with Sonos One.

But the Brennan B2 is also a 2TB NAS with a client device integrated. It’s £550. It works with Sonos. The DAC section might be a little nicer. But I am not sure if it’s as versatile as a true NAS? Could I store DVDs and photos on it for instance? Need to read up on that.

If you have your heart set on a NAS you’ll also need to consider how you back it up. And having owned and sold similar hardware, personally I wouldn’t put much faith in a plastic consumer unit. I doubt that little thing could handle video files or more than one connected user. Perhaps try to find something a little more industrial that has WD Reds in it?

Also if you’re getting a NAS that gives you more option. why not use chromecast audio rather than Sonos?

Ok. There are plenty of other hifi streamers available that support airplay 2 but it seems like you’ve discounted this in favour of a NAS. So I would be looking at any cheap DLNA client, lots on amazon for little money

Edit: i still think a NAS is overkill for what you’re doing. Better to get a little Yamaha streamer and put a usb stick in the back of it, or if you really want multiroom then build a NUC (or a Mac mini) and run plex Media Server with chromecasts in the other rooms. Much more reliable and better SQ. You can get a Gigbyte Brix with optical and analogue out with 512Gb SSD which will kick seven shades out of a cheapo NAS and Sonos Connect. Both of these solutions are within your budget. If you go with the NUC you won't spend more than £250 all in.

Not interested in the 2nd hand Sonos Connect I posted a couple of pages back? IIRC it was less than £200.

Plenty of them on eBay.

Nah. Yeah! Dunno. Need to google the six new abbreviations @freddo has introduced :^]

Seriously though. Maybe.

Speaker stands that aren't ugly. Talk to me. I want a pair of Atacama's but are mega bucks in the U.S.