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Maybe bookshelf style. May just be looking for more portability than my current components. No Bluetooth variety, please. I'd always heard Bose are bass-y, correct ?
Thanks.
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01-15-2016 07:11 PM
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Audiophiles look on Bose as nothing special at best.
You might want to research on Audiogon. It's the audiophile version of The Gear Page; there's a wealth of information.
Audiophiles go through pricey gear like toothbrushes, too. There are tremendous opportunities in used gear if you're slightly patient.
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Bose is a decent system, but is very basic, and very inexpensive. How much are you looking to spend?
If your budget is $10,000 for just the CD player the following will work.
McIntosh MCD1100, Headphone Amplifier, Headphone Amp, Headphones Amplifier
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..Or this McIntosh, assuming I hit the next lottery......
McIntosh MXA70 Lifestyle System: 50 Watt Stereo Amplifier with 6 Inputs and Compact Custom Speakers
I had always thought Bose was so-so and overpriced......They have products for around $400- $500.
So who else is there ? if someone else sells 'so-so' - -or better - for $300-400, maybe that's what I should be looking at. In the old days it was check out Sony, Teac, Akai ??
Just wondering who the other guys are now.
Thx
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I you like really flat sounding gear then Bose is good. I had a Bose system and for music was just too flat and I ended up hooking it up to my TV. I have some Bose headphone and they aren't too bad not as flat as the speaker system was. Also Bose is pricey for what it is.
For small portable the Sony's are usually good bang for the buck, as soon as you say portable then sound isn't going to be that good. Plus market for CD gear is shrinking with industry pushing digital downloads not a lot to choose from.
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A5+N Powered Speakers .
You'll never look at Bose or Polk Audio again. And possibly, McIntosh. The wonders of magazine advertising. The last great McIntosh was the MC275.
If you require a CD player, look for a ROTEL. Or any DVD/CD player and hook it up to an outboard DAC converter.
(Note that the speakers are mirror-imaged. Place them with the tweeters "inwards'. If you don't have the space to site them 6-feet apart, place the tweeters 'outwards'. Best placed on dedicated hifi stands about 18" high. Pull them away about 3 feet from the rear wall, 6 feet apart centre to centre, angled-in a little so that the drivers face your ears respectively or leave them parallel to the rear wall. These are starting positions. Use your ears to tweak the positions. Pull them out a little from the boundaries (rear wall, side walls, room corners; hard reflective surfaces such as mirrors, window panes or table tops are no-nos). Push them back a little. Pull them apart. Push them closer.
If you have a hard wooden or tiled floor, throw a large rug down between the you and the speakers.
Use your ears. At the 'correct' positions, you will hear stereo-imaging, breadth and depth, that is encoded on most minimally-miked recordings snap into place. The audiophile test is simple: how closely does it come to reproducing the sound of the real thing? 50s, 60s Blue Note recordings are great for this. Verve, Pablo, etc. Does the sax have brassy bite? Does the ride cymbal sound like a cymbal? Can you tell that it is an ES-175 type archtop? On a good hifi, these timbres are easily recognisable. Does the music have rhythmic flow and beat? On a good hifi, you can feel the rhythmic interplay between the musicians, and the pulse of the music.
These are things audiophools listen out for when looking for a hifi. OK, not all as some have cloth ears, don't know music when it bites them in the arse and are in for conspicuous consumption. The stereotype of the audiophool with a $250 000 hifi system and a 50 CD collection of choo-choo trains and blah music is true to a large extent. Some tube amps are $500 000 for a pair. A $10 000 Mcintosh does not even get a look-in. And not all high-dollar hifi systems are good at music reproduction.
Yeah, that Jabberwackov is imagining things again. An electrical signal is an electrical signal, right? Digital is perfect, right?)Last edited by Jabberwocky; 01-16-2016 at 01:02 AM.
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Yeah, I wonder the future of CD's.
With MP3's I have my entire CD collection ripped onto a 256 gig memory stick to play anywhere I go, or I can make a single CD with some 15+ albums for the car. My PC is my music repository played back through my TV no AC powered stuff lying around gathering dust.
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i wonder if B&O might have something for you?
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Originally Posted by GNAPPI
Yeah, I'm about 2/3 vinyl and 1/3 cd's.......now that's dating me....
...But thanks for the suggestions........and the info - -I now know what DAC means !!
Dennis
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I haven't been in the market for a while, but my little Yamaha Pianocraft mini receiver with built in CD player is quite nice. Not big $$ audiophile stuff for sure, but with a subwoofer & a pair of B&W bookshelf speakers, it's quite a decent small stereo.
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Originally Posted by Longways to Go
Good suggestion - -thanks !!!!
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You said B&W; you're more of an audiophile than you let on. It is not defined by its price-tag. The all important midrange can be well-reproduced with decent dollars. It is in the bass region (below 80hz), especially, and the treble (above 5Khz) that a disproportionate amount of money is spent with small returns. Originally Posted by Longways to Go
The famous BBC LS3/5a type is still the touchstone for its reproduction of voices today.
As for meself, I always say, go for speakers that reproduce 50Hz to 12.5KHz very well and you will be fine for 90% of the music out there. This is in the size of "bookshelf" speakers and speakers in this size don't have to cost a lot although some do.
Two of the best I have heard are the Harbeth Monitor 30.1s, and B&W 805 Nautilus.Last edited by Jabberwocky; 01-17-2016 at 02:22 AM.
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+1 on B&W. After chasing my tail for years in the audiophile market, I settled on a pair of B&W speakers, a decent paced amp, and a good preamp. This system works fine for my listening needs. I haven't found a CD player I really like, though. FWIW, the NAD C516BEE is a well regarded CD player that doesn't cost an arm and a leg--$300. I have one and it has better fidelity and pace than the other CD transports/players that I have. I still listen to a lot of vinyl, so a preamp with a good phono preamp is a must--I like my 25 year-old PS Audio.
One feature of a system like this is that it reveals the limits of much of the downloaded digital music. It's just too lossy. Oh, well.Last edited by Greentone; 01-16-2016 at 02:53 PM.
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I am running a pair of 20 year old B&W CM1/CM2 speakers. I have the white ones with black grills. I never really had a good amp to match. At the moment I am using a Denon receiver. Just bought a Motu Ultralight AVB that serves as my audio interface. (Had to make custom cables, disconnecting the sleeve, (TRS) on the Motu outputs to use a consumer unbalanced RCA input.)
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"Bose" is audio gimmickry - audio trash really....advertised and packaged for the lazy and the ignorant. One has to educate themselves with hands on experience to determine what qualifies as "good" audio reproduction.
CD's, born in '79 as the future of audio, and a replacement for the "record player" never actually reached the point from a performance standard where it eclipsed the turntable. Much like Bose, the CD was packaged and sold in mass quantities as a convenience product.
One doesn't have to spend massive amounts of money to own a great stereo system. For less than the price of an L5 one can assemble an audio system that reproduces music "better" than 99% of the planet has ever heard. Small watt tube amps mated to efficient speakers is where it's at...eliminate your massive bass fetish, eliminate huge amplifier power requirements by integrating a decent subwoofer. You'll be surprised by what $5k worth of "used" gear can reproduce.
The CD has been replaced by Computer Audio and a simple DAC, as the new "convenient" method of music reproduction.
But like the CD, one has to spend nearly $2k minimum to acquire a DAC worthy of taking the Computer Audio plunge.
If you're a jazz fanatic, the world is your oyster, for much of what you'd want to listen to has existed and available for 50 years, on vinyl. It never went anywhere.
Still, today, there is no more dynamic music reproduction than what's available on vinyl. It's not even close, imo.
I sold my high end CD player several years ago for what I paid for it, and bought a high end DAC. I listen to internet jazz radio via an iMac desktop, played back through 'stats', a sub, powered by a small 10 watt KT88 based SET amp, and a tube preamplifier. 10 watts of tube power driving hard to drive electrostats?! You heard it hear first...this isn't your grandfather's audio system
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I could not agree more, "bass" in a traditional speaker design is such a waste, as to recreate great bass one has to spend massive amounts of money on an amplifier capable of handling those huge bass drivers. I've never been a fan of traditional box speaker designs. Years ago I discovered "open baffle" speaker designs, and never looked back to box speakers. Freeing up those massive amplification dollars meant one could convert to low watt tube amps as the basis to drive their system. Originally Posted by Jabberwocky
And the funny thing is, with open baffle designs, you could not only experience great bass, but bass that is tighter and far more musical than experienced in a traditional boxed design.
The power demands of OB's are as low as 3 watts...tube watts
How does one reconcile the former huge, and expensive, power amplifier demands of 15" bass drivers, of a former "box" design, in an open baffle design? Plate amps...they're cheap, and plentiful. A plate amp is all that's required to drive a woofer.
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Wow....
Interesting and thanks....looks like I missed a couple changes in format......
Funny about coincidences - -I just this minute finished watching Woody Allen's 'Sleeper' on a movie channel.....very appropriate to my take on this....
Thanks again !
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+10 000, 2bop and Greentone. Love audiophile talk with one who belongs to that "church".
Last edited by Jabberwocky; 01-17-2016 at 04:15 AM.
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Audiophools will go very far down the road to get what they want. Been there done that. As 2b said, $5k will get you fabulous sound - especially if you go used. Audiogon.com is OK. Not what it used to be. Audioasylum.com is good too. Finding someone in your area willing to help you in the local used market is probably your best bet.
Once you get very experienced in this, you can go VERY far with little if you are willing to go used.
As 2b notes, high efficiency speakers are a godsend - they make all kinds of things possible. And if you need a powered subwoofer you can do that too to get the bass.
One can get a very good DAC for $1k if one is willing to be 'flexible' in concept. There are some absolutely fabulous portable DACs which can be used in a home stereo (I have the ADL X1 but there are others in the same price range (the SONY portable high-res DAC is also really fabulous).
If you are handy with woodworking, making speakers off plan can be rewarding and inexpensive. Look up 'frugal horn' and you'll find all kinds of sizes (or you are in the same area as 2b, you could PM him about alternate possibilities :-)
As Jabber noted also, the B&W 805s are really great-sounding speakers for their size. They, however, require more power than 2b was talking about. If you are OK with a one-box solution, the Linn Magik from several years ago would have the power and the doodads to match the 805s and should be available used and 'cheap'. The NAIM Uniti would be a similar choice. More recently, Peachtree Audio has made some decent-sounding one-box solutions. Far better than Bose.
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OH boy, you got to drag me right back in...I gave on on audiophoolery more than a decade ago as it looked increasingly to me that it was all about fancy faceplates, humongous ironware, and ridiculous price-tags. Throw in a lot of geewhizz mysticism and it was enough to turn me off.
OK, I'm only surprised travisty didn't mention the NAIM Nait. The NAIM Nait and the Neat Petite or Epos 14 were the skint audiophile's godsend.
This just reminded me of one of the best 'exotic' panel loudspeakers still made in America: Magneplanar. Check out the Magnepan MMG for $599. 60-day home trial. How can anyone lose? Magnepan .
Buy used. Audio Research Corp. Conrad-Johnson. Krell. Mark Levinson. Spectral Audio. NAIM Audio. JADIS. All of 20-year old or greater vintage are still very good amps if they are in good condition. They were built to last.
A used set of NAIM NAP 72/HiCap power supply Olive or NAC 180 Olive preamp + NAIM NAP 250 Olive + B&W 805 or Harbeth Compact 7/Super HL5s is the bee's knees. Regaplanar 3 as the front end.Last edited by Jabberwocky; 01-17-2016 at 07:45 AM.
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+1 on the Magnepans. GREAT speakers for the price. Need a little oomph on the amp but easily doable. They even have a bass panel/woofer for movies. Best deal in new American-made speakers and a great company to deal with.
Otherwise go used. I've got nothing younger than 20yrs old (other than digital) and I couldn't be happier.
If you want to go 'cheap' but great, go for a high end Yamaha receiver/amp from the late 70s or early 80s CR-xxx or C-xxx with a higher number in front (the first x should be a 6 or higher). And a pair of Yamaha NS-1000 speakers from about the same period. Wait for them on Craigslist or eBay local pickup. Want to get better? improve the amp. The speakers are about as good as you can get for the used price.
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Let's not forget Marantz PM series, Parasound, Adcom USA, B&K Components (Canadian)...Good electronics that deserve wider exposure. And yeah, Exposure UK.
I'd be seriously remiss not to mention Quicksilver Audio of Stockton, California. Still made in the USA by Mike Sanders since the 1970s. http://www.quicksilveraudio.com/ .Last edited by Jabberwocky; 01-17-2016 at 08:47 AM.
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I am finding a lot of my musician friends are using powered monitors these days, that are available from music store audio departments. I think they offer a good alternative to traditional stereo systems at a reasonable price. You might be able pick up a pair of these, and the rest of your needs for the cost of the Bose system. They also have balanced inputs that would be important for compatibility with any audio interface that you would buy at a music store audio department.
e.g. KRK Rokit 5 | Sweetwater.comLast edited by DanielleOM; 01-17-2016 at 09:00 AM.
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FWIW, 'pro' audio gear like Danley Sound Lab speakers or similar can be truly excellent (but you don't get the exotic wood veneer telling you that you've spent too much money). But they are not necessarily pretty. I am less enamoured of pro audio amplification. Too much attention paid to efficiency and not enough to linearity.
A 'cheap' way to get really nice-sounding good amplification/speakers might be 'pro' audio speakers with pentode-wired tube amps.
For powered speakers, I like ATCs, but haven't found anyone else who does it as well.Last edited by travisty; 01-17-2016 at 12:16 PM.
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Must have been cold on the set that day... Originally Posted by Dennis D
Wow....
Interesting and thanks....looks like I missed a couple changes in format......
Funny about coincidences - -I just this minute finished watching Woody Allen's 'Sleeper' on a movie channel.....very appropriate to my take on this....
Thanks again !
Love that movie--saw it a couple of months ago. Still funny!
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