Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

What is the constraint? Budget? Room size? What is your objective? Great sound or cool tech? Choose speakers (or at least narrow it down to a handful you like), then amp, then source.

On the volumio I'm not sure I get why you'd use it over and above any other £30 headless DLNA client like plex on a firestick or a chromecast. Given you have to pick up a phone or tablet, you might as well open the spotify app whilst you're there. What's the benefit?

get a dac for the raspberry pi

All of those things. Budget isn't massive, nor is the room. Ultimately I'm not an audio connoisseur, but if one option is better than the other I'd opt for that.

Volumio on raspi has cost me the same £30 as a Chromecast, but can also play from a hard drive or internet radio, and integrates natively into my smart home hub interface.

With raspi i can get a DAC hat and run it directly to active speakers, or a DAC+amp hat and run it to passive speakers, I'm just curious to hear why one would opt for active vs passive speakers?

Have you considered DIY?

Bought a Sonos Beam as part of a new wireless 5.1 set up for the TV today.

Means I've got a yamaha 4k av receiver and a pair of Cambridge Audio floorstanders up for sale if anyone is interested.

What's the deets on the av?

I can add a B&W CC6 centre speaker as well if anyone wants to buy it to go with Soul's amp and speakers.

ok got it. So I guess active speakers offer you an amp that is matched to the speakers and is typically cheaper (if buying new) than separates, but you sacrifice additional input channels and maybe power. They're also (usually) less clutter. It really depends on your budget and if you want to add more sources in the future.

Active speakers can make the most of amplifiers that are almost directly connected to the speaker and matched to the resistance of the driver+wiring. In that way a well designed active speaker can use amplifier power more effectively. If it's well designed it should outperform the speaker+amp combination.

Passive + Amp means that the speakers still work if the amp stops working, you can tailor the amp power and flavour to suit your budget etc. The amp can get very hot and use massive heat sinks because it's not constrained by the speaker box.

Those are some basic differences.

If you have active speakers you really need some kind of pre amp or mixer.

Ah right, yes. Though some smaller speakers might also have volume controls, but yeah, good point...

I could clarify that a bit I guess. Essentially you need an easy way to allow a number of sources to share the speakers but there are loads of options depending on how straight wire you want or need it to be. One of my methods recently was the Motu 8D for mixing a bunch of digital sources and then sending them to a pair of monitors with digital input. Worked really well.

AV receiver is a yamaha RX-V481

Full 4K HDR across all 4 inputs and ARC. Wireless network connection and Bluetooth.

2 Attachments

Speakers are Cambridge Audio S70 bi-wireables.

I think I've got the grills somewhere but will need to hunt for them.

Come with about 2m of speaker wire each side and a set of floor spikes.

2 Attachments

^ Watched that last night, those boys sure make intriguing movies.
I think 'Mortal Remains' was my favourite bit.

Prayers answered. KEF LSX, smaller LS50. Whathifi review is solid and they look tiny:

https://www.whathifi.com/reviews/kef-lsx
https://www.kefdirect.com/lsx-wireless-music-system.html

Big Kef fan here, I love my R300s. But for £1000 you could get a second hand pair of LS50s and a decent streamer / amp

I know I know, but they’re tiny 🤓 size is the main criteria here.

So current living room set up is some KEF speakers on stands, these do all the music playing duties while also doubling up as some nice sounding speakers when watchign films/ playing the xbox.

I've seen in Richer sounds the Q Acoustics 3050 are on sale, am I likely to see that much of an improvement over my current bookshelves? Coming from a guy who literally started with audio equipment this year (asides from headphones and amps).

I'm justifying this by saying my current KEF speakers can then be moved upstairs to carry out PC speaker duties (with a nice amp).

on my list of for sells:

technics sl1210 (modded) mat, cable, puck all incl)
trilogy 906
Hana SL MC cart
1:10 SUT for above
Clearaudio Smartmatrix RCM
Feickert cart alignment tool

PM me if you are interested.

i had a bit of a scare with the boy and i am postponing the vinyl extravagance for a while and going back to the trusty sony and an mm cart.

Hope everything is ok with the little'un. I've no records left but no doubt someone will want an upgrade to some nice kit!

He’s fine - the scare was hifi related!

I wish I could mothball it all

You don't say what Kefs you have but the Q Acoustics 3050s will be a significant upgrade over most bookshelf speakers.

Which xbox? Which games?