new Hi-Fi

[Richardp]

friends I'm after a new Hi-Fi system but there's so much out there, I was thinking of a Micro system and thought maybe a Denon m13 {i didn't really think this, it was our kid} anyway after trawling the www it occurred to me that as I know sod all about it I would put it to you as there's bound to be someone here that's hip to the subject?? I don't really wont to spend more than £250-£300 any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Scoby_Beasley]

If you were going for seperates, your oyster would be your world (or something like that !! ). With micros I'd definitely take a good look at the Denon kit on offer. Marantz is another maker of quality kit.
Buy a copy of "Hi-Fi What and Sound Vision" (re-arrange words into the correct order) . Their reviews of gear are generally spot on, who knows, they may even convince you to stretch your budget a tad further.
B.T.W. Usually the shortfall on buying one of these "systems" is (a) the speaker cable, (b) the speakers. Get your hands on fifty sobs and buy a pair of compact Mission speakers, believe me, even a deaf person will hear the difference. Then wack in some half decent speaker cable. Heaven !!!

 

[Richardp]

Thanks Scoby I'm back on the case . (I've heard about them speakers)

 

[Scoby_Beasley]

I copped a pair of Mission M74i speakers from Richer sounds. Cost fifty as I said. They replaced my antique Wharfedales (these were still good but the size of 2 coffins), the sound is crisp, clear, bass is tight, cannot fault them. G'luck mate

MOD

you could have put the words in the right order scoby

no probs

 

[Scoby_Beasley]

Mod, I never try to advertise if I can help it.
I have been told

MOD

not by me if it is pertinent feel free if it is blatant it gets the chop

 

[AdamW]

I too would recommend Richer. There are several other outfits who are just as cheap now (Hifibitz is one that springs to mind), so it could be worth using "Froogle" once you have decided what you are getting. Richer usually let you sit down and have a listen, it is advisable to phone them the day before though, then they can set up what you want to hear.

Micros have definitely got better in recent years, but you will still get the best sound per pound from a set of separates. £300 will get you a great-sounding CD (or even SACD or DVD-Audio), amp and speaker set-up.

 

[felix]

Scoby_Beasley hits the nail on the head. In my young day the two weakest links in the hi-fi chain were the record deck (remember them, your parents called them gram-o-phones!) and the speaker(s).

The arrival of the CD has eliminated the first weak link but the speaker problem remains. The general rule is the more massive the better because:

a) It's difficult to generate low frequencies with a small cone. You can't get much to come out below the resonant frequency of the thing and it has to travel much further to shift the same volume of air as a large cone.

b) The sound from the rear must be adequately contained or it will run round the front and cancel out the sound you want. This calls for a very solid box.

I will concede that speakers might have improved since I built my 8" units into bass reflex boxes 25 years ago. That's because 25 years before that a woofer just HAD to be at least 12" - and 18" was better!

NB: When comparing speakers don't get caught out by the effect known as pseudo-bass. This is where the brain reconstructs missing low frequency sounds from their harmonics. I have a simple check for this. Put the speaker near your chest rather than your ear. A bass drum should be felt in the rib cage.

 

[petewood]

About 18 months ago I spent some time looking round and bought a Technics SCHD 350 (I think this has been superceded by another model no. now though). After I ordered it I was pleased to see it had received good reviews in Which magazine or some other mag, and it certainly lives up to my expectations. I think it was about £230.

Like Scoby I was prepared to swap the speakers provided as I also was replacing Wharfedales (bought by my Dad in the '60s and still excellent) but the speakers that came with the Technics I thought were great and I kept them.

I think Richer Sounds are pretty good but I bought mine from another company on the internet and saved a few quid.

When I get home tonight I am going to have to hold my speakers to my chest and see if I can pummel my ribcage!

 

[ferdinanddebargos]

the two weakest links in the hi-fi chain were the record deck (remember them, your parents called them gram-o-phones!) and the speaker(s).

The arrival of the CD has eliminated the first weak link but the speaker problem remains.

Felix, you're way off the mark. Vinyl is far superior to CD's and always will be. You just have to play them on a Hi Fi, not a Lo Fi which I suspect you are doing. And record decks are called turntables.
_____________________
moderator

edited to correct quote

 

[Richardp]

Well I was talking to my dad about this and he reminded me that when we was kids he built his own "Heathkit" anyone heard of them? Big speakers? phew! they was like houses, mind you I was a little critter then so I spose they seemed bigger than they was, but I do remember his building them heathkit hi fi, the smell of the flux off the hot soldering iron.

 

[AdamW]

Felix, you're way off the mark. Vinyl is far superior to CD's and always will be. You just have to play them on a Hi Fi, not a Lo Fi which I suspect you are doing. And record decks are called turntables.

Hey, now we're getting into personal taste A lot of people spend all their time worrying about their hi-fi producing a flat frequency response. I don't. I don't care if the producer liked it with a flat response: perhaps I like a bit more bass than he did!

Only two areas where I see vinyl as superior are:

1) can make novelty-shaped records, who was it who put several spindle holes with elipse-shaped grooves? made for "interesting" pitch-shifting!
2) ergonomics: you can handle it, do a bit of scratching etc. You can't really do that with CDs.

However, in terms of sound quality, CDs are technically better. You are welcome to prefer the sound of vinyl though

If you really want to make the walls shake (an ex-neighbour with a rubbish stereo and even more rubbish taste in music did it for me), try plugging a 15" bass guitar amp into the headphone socket of your stereo for a few minutes

 

[felix]

A lot of the talk about hi-fi or the lack of it is indeed personal taste but there are a few facts available:

1) The cheapest, nastiest CD player will beat the best turntable in the wow and flutter department. Its spindle speed may wander all over the place but the data is read from a buffer by a crystal controlled clock.

2) Pickup arms suffer from tracking distortion - unless you have a parallel tracking one. CD's don't.

3) A curved stylus tip, even an elliptical one, cannot accurately follow a groove made by a chisel shaped cutter. This leads to harmonic distortion increasing with frequency.

4) A pickup arm has a low frequency limit set by the cartridge compliance and the arm's inertia. A CD player doesn't.

5) The turntable/pickup arm combination is prone to external mechanical noise. CD's react only to a deliberate thump!

The one thing that CD's suffer from - and LP's don't - is digitization noise. This form of distortion is subjectively much worse than a simple measurement would suggest because it increases as the amplitude falls. With just one exception that I can think of (cross-over), distortion in analogue systems diminishes with amplitude.

For this reason I have to agree with ferdinanddebargos. A pristine LP played on the best equipment will always outperform a CD. What it will sound like many playings later is not so obvious but, to be fair, CD's are not as indestructible as that Tomorrow's World episode would have us believe!

One of the few advantages of getting old is that the ears no longer notice high frequency shortcomings as they once did. I cannot hear the digitization problems that I know must exist in any CD player. I will therefore continue to favour the convenience and smaller size of the CD over the LP - and also the ease with which I can run off near perfect backup copies.

 

[jtaunton]

I agree with all of the above, except for the digitisation noise - I think the steps are so small that no human ear could ever possibly detect it. As long as the sampling rate is double the highest audio frequency, then that doesn't come into it either......

And they're definitely not indestructible, as nearly everything in my car will prove. I think the problem comes not from the playing face, but the label side, as this is relatively unprotected and so any scratches on here directly affect the reflection from the foil layer.

 

[AdamW]

I can see why the arguments for vinyl still exist. Of course, an audiophile turntable to make full use of the LP is bloomin' expensive!

The effective bandwidth of the two media is about the same: vinyl is up to 20kHz or so, a CD is sampled at 44.1kHz. Which means, if you remember your Nyquist theorem, that you can faithfully reproduce signals up to 22kHz. However, the frequency response curve of vinyl is, as you pointed out, far from flat, certainly in comparison to CD. Which is back to the personal-preference dimension. Vinyl might sound "better", even if it sounded better to everyone it wouldn't necessarily have a superior sound quality. It is exactly the same as my preference to add a touch of extra bass.

Now, I have a turntable, a pretty decent one. It's basically a clone of a Technics SL1200. It wasn't cheap, and I think it does a pretty good job of playing vinyl. But the turntables that people claim to have better sound reproduction than CD cost upwards of £20K! And I can't remember if that includes the tone arm and cartridge. It looked more like a potter's wheel than a piece of hi-fi

Jtaunton, you are correct. Damaging the label side causes problems as the laser in the CD player is focused at this point, not the "playing side" surface of the disc. I found my CDs only started getting knackered when I kept them in the car, I think it is the temperature cycling that ruins them. Also, I agree with the quantisation steps being too small to be noticable. However, DVD-A uses 24-bit quantisation, perhaps it helps reduce compression noise?

When I was 17 I used to record tapes for the car, my preferred method was to record from vinyl to cassette with Dolby switched on, then play them back in the car with it turned off. I'm sure audiophiles would scream, but it is what sounded nicest to me

 

[pipme]

was assured this 'Pressit labelling kit' was cr ap... several years down the line all the cd's made and labelled are fine ... several non-labelled are now coasting their way to the tip .... Hence a little reticence about the best and the worst and all that jazz !!

Here is a truism from an MOD ship builder :- " There are more planes in the ocean than submarines in the sky." Hokay !!