Buying a new home audio system

Mike Ansberry

My home stereo is ancient.

I sold my Wurlitzer piano and was planning on getting a keyboard amp for my Korg. A friend who is a keyboard pro said If I'm not gigging with it I Should put the money toward decent home stereo instead and run it through that. It sounded like a good idea.

I am not looking to spend a lot of money on it, but I would like to get a nice sounding amp and speakers.

Ideas? Cost?

Mike Ansberry

This post is deleted!

Mike Ansberry

My room is 14 feet by 30 feet.

I have a 50 year old Pioneer amp that cuts out periodically on one channel. I have cleaned the switches and pots in it but it still cuts out. I ave a Shure SM81-CN and a 50 year old Shure PE5888.

I would like to keep the cost for all under $1500. Is that doable?

Newell Post

I'll ask my audiophile buddy later tonight. Of course, he spends $1,500 on speaker cables.....

Shifty

@mike-ansberry said in Buying a new home audio system:

My room is 14 feet by 30 feet.

I have a 50 year old Pioneer amp that cuts out periodically on one channel. I have cleaned the switches and pots in it but it still cuts out. I ave a Shure SM81-CN and a 50 year old Shure PE5888.

I would like to keep the cost for all under $1500. Is that doable?

I had a Sansui amp/receiver from 1973 that did that. Had a pair of power transistors replaced, and that fixed it for a while, then it started up again. So I replaced it 25 years ago with a Kenwood that was reasonably priced. Saved myself the cost and ass-pain of repeated repairs. It's hard to find competent techs who still know how to work on in-circuit components.

ROWUK

@mike-ansberry This is a HUGE topic. I built my own, horn loudspeakers and low powered tube amplification.

administrator

This is a topic which I thoroughly enjoy. Would love to build my own speakers one day, but for now, I have a solid amplifier which I use to power either 2 or 4 speakers. I try some, trade some here or there. It's a fun hobby.

Newell Post

I talked to my audiophile friend. He doesn't do $1,500 home stereo systems, but here's what he said....

Just go to Best Buy and see what they have from Yamaha or Denon in your price range.
Make sure the receiver has the right inputs to match the output of your keyboard. Many of the newer receivers don't have old-style inputs.
If you can find actual specs for the system you are buying, make sure the electrical output of your keyboard is compatible with the input of the receiver. (It is probably OK. Just try to check.)

Trumpetb

I am not a specialist and havent been into hifi for more decades than I care to remember, so forgive my poor comments.

Your system looks good to me, I see a well and strongly decoupled platter (the large slab beneath the gramophone/phonograph) and good and interesting elements well put together, however I do not see any decoupling between the speakers and the floor.

The sound stage might be muddied by crosstalk through the floor.

Is it worth considering fitting a decoupling arrangement beneath the speakers. (a large weight like a slab, and a suspension) So the speakers can be active without propagating sound into the floor.

A few dollars spent here might help clean up the sound and replace a few hundred dollars invested in the amplifier or other areas dealing with the crosstalk.

It also would make your general soundproofing of the room more effective. Floors do propagate sound very well.

Removing the crosstalk at source is always a good and less expensive move than having to lift the quality of the other stages to deal with it at those later stages.

Speakers generate as you know a lot of energy to the room that can overwhelm everything if not controlled.

On the other hand having the floor as a resonant base can make the sound more alive and less clinical and we never want a dead sounding room.

It all depends on the relative construction of all the physical components and how they interact in the journey stylus-cartridge-platter-preamp-amp-plinth-speaker-floor-plinth-platter-stylus (endless loop) to determine the best sound quality compromise for the equipment and the room.

Have you considered removing the cartridge (keeping it connected) and spinning it so its connecting wires are twisted together like a rope. then refitting it this can give crosstalk at source at the cartridge which can improve the sound.

Another zero cost improvement is to swap the speaker cables end to end. it was believed that the flow of electrons along the cables can be slightly different in each direction affecting the sound and spinning one or the other cable end to end might match them and improve the sound.

I am unconvinced of this effect myself having never witnessed it but that was a commonly held belief back in the day with high end system audiophiles so I repeat it here.

Additionally the use of very heavy 79 strand speaker cable was highly recommended and I experienced benefits from using that, if you havent zeroed in on your speaker cables then this is a low cost area to explore.

Of course connecting cables are often overlooked and high quality gold tipped cables can benefit although we do risk being ripped off by less than scrupulous manufacturers marketing ridiculously expensive cables that carry little benefit.

I am sure you have most of these areas already sorted out but maybe I have offered something new.

ROWUK

@trumpetb Thank you for the comments.
Before getting into any details, I do not have an audiophile bone in my whole body. My playback is from a musicians perspective totally free of audiophile artifacts like "pinpoint imaging", high resolution or any other copy/paste thing used by the audio press. Design goals were a natural soundstage representing about row 15 in my favorite concert hall, natural sense of space and size - singers mouths should not be portrayed with the same hugeness as a piano or string section. In addition, the integration between the drivers is something that I payed special attention to. The crossover points are not audible to anyone that has visited and spent any time listening.

What you can not see: The real bamboo wood floor is covering up a concrete slab to which it is directly attached (constrained layer). It does not show any resonances below 500 Hz. The sand filled woofer cabinet also does a remarkable job of destroying anything that would want to escape the closed box. The back of the speaker has two high quality castors to ease moving the speakers. The front of the cabinet has two legs with a ball bearing at the base to couple where the woofer has the most weight. This couples with the hard bamboo with a very small area.

Soundproofing is something that I have no interest in. None of the products that I have ever tested resulted in anything sonically worthy. The lumpy decay characteristics of a treated room may be OK with commercial close miked studio recordings that have no natural acoustics, but that is not what I seriously listen to. If I want freedom of room acoustics, I use my AKG 701 headphones.

Horn loudspeakers ARE used to limit crosstalk - in a very natural way, lowering distortion and amp power requirements. With about a 60° dispersion between 500 and 20K, side walls, floors and ceilings are adequately "out of the picture". The vertical woofer array also limits dispersion in that plane.

The Van den Hul wiring harness for the tone arm is twisted, but not too tightly. The SME 3009 II tonearm does not have a removable headshell.

Speaker cable voodoo is something that I refuse to comment on. My amplifiers are near the speakers and all of the speaker level interconnects are less than 12" long.

Interconnect artifacts are audible, but not in the audiophile sense. Low capacitance, resistance and excellent shielding are simple things easily accomplished. This also reflects what recording engineers have known for decades. The miles of microphone cables do not seem to have comprimised any of the recordings that I use as references. A squirt of WD40 on all of the RCA plugs keeps corrosion minimized without compromising the metal to metal contact.

The only real issue that I had was getting a phono preamp that had enough gain to match my digital devices. So with Tim DeParavicinis help, I modified the EAR 834P to get more gain. The results with the Ortofon Rohmann cartridge (predecessor to the Winfield) now are equal to the digital playback. The level of enjoyment is equal although I have no digital or analog releases that sound exactly the same - despite mastering work.

The focus is ONLY on my own personal enjoyment and this is done simply by identifying root negative artifacts and eliminating them (one by one over many years). There is not much left to do, although the playback is not perfect. The limiting factors (room size for instance) are not possibilities that I can do anything about.

Kehaulani

I'm a simple guy, too. Sound first, technology . . meh. Give me a set of KLH speakers and an Onkyo amp and I'm a happy guy.

I do agree with one thing, though. Check the equipment's input jacks. They are different on various equipment and don't take for granted that the ones you need are there.

administrator

I have been able to get excellent sound for around $2000, but you have to look carefully and maybe have some soldering skills.

ROWUK

@kehaulani said in Buying a new home audio system:

I'm a simple guy, too. Sound first, technology . . meh. Give me a set of KLH speakers and an Onkyo amp and I'm a happy guy.

I do agree with one thing, though. Check the equipment's input jacks. They are different on various equipment and don't take for granted that the ones you need are there.

KLH Model 9s were about the best that money could buy once upon a time, and even today they are still very, very close! I am not sure that there is an Onkyo amplifier suitable however...

Mike Ansberry

Thanks for all the replies!

I decided to bring the Onkyo amp out of the house and into my studio. I found a pair of Klipsh tower speakers that have what I consider to be a really nice sound. I am enjoying the "new" rig.

Dr GO

@mike-ansberry said in Buying a new home audio system:

Thanks for all the replies!

I decided to bring the Onkyo amp out of the house and into my studio. I found a pair of Klipsh tower speakers that have what I consider to be a really nice sound. I am enjoying the "new" rig.

I have Klipsh speakers and really like them much. They have amazing stability so much so that I put my mini moog through them in preference to my Kustom PA system.