HiFi

Well dont we spend money on cars,motorcycles, stereo's & clothes so we can get the girls.  Everything is for the girls man...Ev-er-ree-thing

I've got an old b&o turntable, sansui receiver, and another realistic receiver sitting here in this room. Some great stuff out of that era.

I demo'd the new Mcintosh MT10 turntable this summer, with a matching amp and some Polk speakers - LSiM703's. I have always loved Polk home speakers and un the 70's, used Carver Cube amps with Technics belt-drive turntables with "moving coil" cart's.
I went between reel to reel and cassette decks - usually Yamaha or HK.

Just talking about this crap again gets me all riled up. I don't have the dosh for it at the moment, so I best stop...but I do have all my vinyl - much of it Mobil Fidelity Sound Labs masters. Sometimes I love being an old man...

I've a very budget system but it sure beats a £170 Beats Pill pos 

Technics SB-F860 speakers I picked up locally for £15 - fine condition, don't appear to need re-foaming
Maplins speaker cable that my dad bought too much of - generic but heavy duty stuff
Kenwood KA-4020 amp and receiver that I got free locally - needs some more work on the source selector pot 
Gotham GAC-1 interconnects - these had the best name in the budget range
UCA-202 - again had the best name in the budget range
Source - Lossless CD rips and some 24-bit vinyl rips I acquired of some records I own. Need to make friends with someone that owns a high end system to make some more

Great to see others that are into the old gear It's late here, but I will post my gear with some pics this weekend, nothing really fancy, but some nice pieces

I don't have a horse in the audio equipment convo, just wanted to point out the irony in you saying "devil trombones" lol. I play trombone, so I must let you know it's actually referred to as "The Voice of God"

Not offended, lol. I'm just the local marching band nerd, only 1000% more cool

What speakers are considered good these days? I've got a pair of Bose bookshelf speakers but would eventually like to invest in some nice tower speakers. Now that i've taken possession of my music collection i'm anxious to get my audio gear hooked up.

Btw, any recommendations on an inexpensive stylus for my Technics 1200?

Another recommendation for Tannnoy bookshelves, if asthetics aren't your top priority. Prefer them to my main B&W setup, but suspect that's more to do with the amp I'm currently using.

Its easier to get the homogenous and thus more lifelike sound with towers since they are tuned from scratch (components are picked to perform together). With satellites and sub you have to blend and often if they are not very good (expensive) you have to overblend and you get a little bump of too much something, often midbass. Even if you tune with a measuring device its not always you cover the entire frequencie anyway. But yeah sometimes it works great and it boils down to how and what you listen to and how picky you are but this is the main gain from towers. You can still use the sub and cut it at its lowest to just fill inn the very last bottom. Ears arent as picky the lower inn the frequency you go so this usually works good just dont let it fill too high up.

Some hifi stores lets you borrow the speakers to try out with your sub at home.


Edit\ bc bass needs volume of a cabinet since the laws of physics says so, this is why they are big and is also the disadvantage if you dont have the space. This is probably why sub\sat combos sell so well as they do and is their advantage - since lowbass is hard to pinpoint locationwise you can place the sub in other spots where you have more space ( although it will always sound best someplace in the line between the speakers) protip - place the sub where you would normally sit and listen, play a basshappy tune and walk around the room close to the walls, where the bas sounds best to you - paint a red x there and then you can place the sub on that spot and you have found its second beste spot out of the way for a cleaner look. I would say a sub\satellite combo will always be a compromise in sound since its chosen foremost for its aesthetics. It is possible to get a really good combo but will cost more then the equally wellsounding towers is my experience.

The velodyne with its servo is insane and works as an endgame sub imho. Nice one!

So the room will often be the biggest problem also, I tried a 10x more costly subwoofer and without eq they offcourse got the same curve. So after a good purchase of main equipment - fixing the room will probably give the most back in sound quality per dollar. I made my own absorbents but there are alot of nice ones ready to hang up (some even looks like paintings or art) but it needs a little research to do it right but gives better results then buying the teflon covered made in the moonlight vacuum cables with silver and braided by virgins that people sometimes get as an upgrade.

So maybe if you have the space go and hear some towers and see if you like it, then you can sell what you have and use the towers and a new amp and then get a sub eventually if you ever find that you need it. See if you find a place that carries any of Tannoy, Audio Vector, Monitor Audio, Totem, NHT, Velodyne, even dali or Infinity, Im not saying its right for you but they probably have more other real hi-fi speakers then the stores carrying pioneer or the likes. Bring music cd you know preferably a mix and listen to the parts you know well and know how to expect. I have a cd i burned with many close bass-hits to see if the setup can separate it or if it gets blurred, and also some voices, aucustic guitar, rock, electric guitar and some tunes i know well. I also have top notch recording and bad recording to see how they perform best and worst case scenario.