Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

If @cjr doesn't take them, I will!

I’d be interested. Have been meaning to get a decent pair for a while. Let me know if they slide down the pm chain..

Just sent him a text, we’ll see

I’ll definitely take them, thanks @dbr
I’ll pm shortly @BRM

Anyone got a tuner / amp combo I could borrow? Any old crap is fine, just need to have it playing Radio 3 through some new drivers for a few days to break them in.

The perfect accessory to you £1000 cables, £200 conductive fluid.

https://www.whathifi.com/us/news/chord-companys-chordohmic-fluid-promises-improved-cable-signal-transfer

Must be made from rare snakes...

Priced at £200 for a 10ml bottle.

Hahhahahahhahabahahhhabahhahabhaaaa.

The best outcome of that is that I now know for sure that Chord are full of shit. And if Chord are full of shit then basically all cable companies are full of shit. Nice to finally know for sure.

I have this in Silver as my family room telly and streaming (with the propriety Yamah blue tooth dingle thing) amp. Amp sounds good and looks great. Knobs are cheap plastic tho.

I've been using the B&W cans plugged into an old Cowan music player thing which I have a load of flac files on.

Sounds way way better than Bluetooth to laptop.

Ok audio weirdos. I need your knowledge. I have an audio setup I'm very happy with; but I like to own my music, so It's all HDD stored. Along with some streaming stuff like soundcloud.

Is there any sort of system that lets me connect the big HDD to it and also let me wirelessly play stuff through it? What should I be looking for. This will all be going through an Analogue amp. Does such a thing exist?

Laptop -> USB DAC?

Something headless.

I only have the one laptop and not keen on having a cable running to the amp. Looking for something more network-y.

I investigated that option but it's more complicated.

After messing about for years with second hand ThinkPads which progressively died, I eventually shelled out £280 for an HP something or other and it is doing a great job.

How are you going to get a signal to the amp? If it doesn't have Bluetooth, you are going to have to plug something into it.

Edit - oh, you mean from your laptop to the amp rather than you don't want any cable going to the amp. You can buy things to provide a Bluetooth connection to the amp.

That's essentially what I'm looking for. Currently using a basic bluetooth unit, but I was wondering if there was something bigger that would accept a USB hdd as well as being some sort of wireless unit that I can connect to the amp/

Like this:

Audioengine B1 Bluetooth 5.0 Music Receiver with 24Bit DAC | HD aptX Codec Receiver with S/PDIF Optical & RCA Coaxial Outputs | Extended 30m Range https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00MHTGZR4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_6ZvuEbGTPF50F

You still need something to read the hard disc, though.

You still need something to read the hard disc, though

You've hit the nail on the head. Not sure such a thing exists. Does that mean I might have to get a NAS setup or something to consolidate it all.

Raspberry pi, whatever the audio distribution is, phone control.

Interesting. I know nothing about Raspberry Pi. I like tinkering but have no idea where to start.

Phone control as remote sounds pretty good if I can do so on the fly.

Allo USBridge or DigiOne with Volumio software depending on whether you want USB or optical/coax connection. That goes into DAC then to amp. Install Roon or freebie similar software (you will need the computer running and connected to WiFi) then you have wireless access to everything on your hard drive with a nice user friendly phone interface.

Ok. That's even more interesting, but I'm a bit confused. Can the former not just feed into the amp via RCA? Does it have to go through a DAC?

The second half of what you're saying is exactly what I want to do.

No because the amp needs an analogue signal and the output from the streamer is digital. Check out Allo’s website, there may be a version with a DAC board included.

DACs tend to be pretty compact devices and you can hide them out of the way.

Other streamers are available but I’ve been very impressed with my Allo USBridge despite having concerns about it being complicated (I’m not a natural tinkerer). It was pretty much just plug and play. Check out some reviews.

Edit: The simplest and cheapest option might be chrome cast audio if you can find one and sound quality isn't the highest priority. That will plug straight into your amp and is supported by Roon.

There are lots of guides on how to use a RPi but I do think it sounds like the kinda thing that would work for you.

https://www.pimusicbox.com/

Raspberry Pi zero W with a phat DAC or hifiberry running volumio would be my suggestion.