Given up on the HT-integrated stereo..now what?

[humblebee]

Hi all,

After going through hundreds of posts I still wasnt sure if having a separate stereo system for music only would be a good idea. Sure there was the suggestion of wharfs with denon avr but ...

Time passed...patience was acquired...and i realised a few things too:
- That in the end i would like to enjoy my music more than enjoy configuring it !
- That I would like an old world style simple to use system (picture a sony hifi) thing BUTT with the sound quality you guys claim one can have (im a newbie...just theoretical knowledge from this forum)
- That yes somehow music was touching till sometime back...then it stopped having 'that' effect in me. Not thinking this over seriously, I has assumed that I had lost interest in it. Not that I was a huge buff...but i used to have my sessions. Why I thought...and then I read about digital music's effect or rather non-effect. The 'envelope' thing etc. I configured cplay on my laptop and flacs started to sound warmer! This is what i want to further explore through my new system.
- That I like words (they have a fancy word lyrics for it no?) and good rythm (one recent example - "man ko ati bhavey")
- That I would like to gift this to my wife who is quite effected by music but hasnt had the privilege of spending on herself like the women of today's new world

Whew! thats my confession father!!!!
I hope thats good learning for 2 years! Without spending anything basically!
But after all im a human and i DO need a system now!!!! And i cant do that without u guys!
Please help me bhai log! confusion confusion.

- My collection is something like this (i like good music so selected songs from):
- GNR (Sweet Child, Nov Rain etc)
- Metallica (The Ecstasy Of The Gold, Nothing Else matters)
- Hysteria, Two steps behind Def Leppard, Im Yours Jason Mraz, Stairway To Heaven, Hotel california, Imagine etc
- And some music that stores my lifes memories like...
- Najane Kyun (Dhaani), O Sanam (Lucky Ali), many songs from KK & Shaan like Tanha Dil, Hum Rahe Ya Na Rahein etc
- recently I have started to feel that indian classical instrumental (not vocal) makes me feel light in my heart! yes i do! like matta taal & teen taal & megh malhar. so i would explore this in future a bit.

..ya well no fancy artists here!!

- And my wife likes to listen to
- Jagjit Singh ghazals
- bhajans
- soft touching music

- budget - 50K for all player, dac, amps & speakers spent over a long time
- mp3, flac & cd playability
- since cplay has an option of 121db SNR, i would prefer a dac in that range
- but how do i use remote controller with cplay ?
- simple screen for browsing the song to play
- Nice if there is storage
- er can i also have 24 bit/192 Khz ...maarna mat !!

And im thinking...
- a Netbook with cplay configured + ASUS USB DAC (only 110 db snr) + lyrita audio amps +speakers or norge amps+speakers
- Havent seen the squeezebox but its duet option seems quite good (whats the snr?)...but will need NAS for that. im not against it though. Also im assuming that i can browse my library on its controller & also create playlists so that after adding 5-10 songs im free to sit back...

for netbook maybe we can ditch cplay & use controller with some other player ??

Madbullram, murali, other greats plz...

Thanks for reading such a long post!
Also i keep going out of station (rural) so dont mind if it takes me a few days to reply but I will surely...
Manish

 

[afj]

i cant say i read every word of that post but from what i understand you want a simple stereo set up and your budget is 50k?

the speakers to beat in that price range are apparently the ushers s520. there are others - monitor audio br2, kef iq series, wharfedale diamonds... once you;ve decided on the speakers, a good stereo amp from nad / cambridge / marantz would do nicely. if you have a decent dvd player then i wont suggest a separate cdp. spend that on buying some good music. im not too clued up on dacs etc when it comes to playing flac files etc

 

[techboy]

Go for a Marantz PM5003 for 17k.

Go for a player for about 3-5k.

Spend the remaining 30k on speakers.

Go for Monitor Audio BX2 or Wharfedale 9.5

 

[hemantwaghe]

If you are very high on conveneince and if you hace wifi then think of Apple airport express + Optical cable + Dac with optical in

Airport Express + Cable will cost you 6 to 7 K..

Play music from your netbook ,and rip all tracks in Apple Lossless

so that you can play your tracks through netbook over WIRELESS network.

I am currently using it and going to post the expereince...

 

[humblebee]

Thanks all for the replies...

Heres what im thinking:

- PC with Essense soundcard (no monitor)
- foobar / cplay controlled with mobile app (when i need to do things like ripping etc i will remote login...)
- Wharfedale Speakers
- Lyrita Tube Amps

What do you think?

Hemant, thats a nice option I didnt think of! But I have some ideas of my own:
- I dislike proprietary formats & I think I will learn from history & stick to open source flacs as of now.
- I need IPhone or IPod for this
- Netbook will not give the feeling of a music system. It will feel like another computer
- Essense soundcard seems amazing value for money.
- I really love the sound of cplay

However It will be nice to hear ur exp so let me know where u have posted ur exp!

To get an envelope exp I think we need a freq response of at least beyond 20-20K, something like 10Hz to 40KHz, but I see that none of Monitor Audio/Wharfedale/even B&W have that.

So stuck on choice of speakers.
I see that even 65K is not sufficing. So lets build a system on paper that does all that I want. I will arrange for money in some time & then assemble my system. But first at least I should know what parts I have to buy.

Thanks again
Manish