I was thinking the other day about having a HiFi system in our living room and realised that I'm hopelessly out of date. I still remember the days of the 'HiFi buff' when magazines carried long articles about belt vs direct drive turntables and which copper wire worked best with which amplifier and speakers. I even had a friend with an old valve amplifier who swore it was the best thing ever, and who spent a fortune every year getting it fixed!

Does anyone know if it's possible to have a system with a hard disk that can hold mp3 files - as well as play CDs? I think I've seen HiFis with slots for SD cards, but I'd need a bit more memory than that.

Steve

How about using iTunes as your source? My hifi is a combination of AVI electronics and ATC speakers (all rather expensive and very good). These days I see AVI have gone over to having just a couple of "active" speakers (speakers with built in amps) in therir product range which take a digital input direct from your mac or PC.

See http://www.avihifi.co.uk/adm9.html

I have quite a bit of stuff on my macbook in iTunes (synced to the iPhone) and I have a wireless link to the hifi. iTunes does give you a great way of taking different types of source material - CDs, radio downloads, mp3s, iTunes purchases and storing and cataloguing it in one place.

The new iPad is going to make a brilliant little iTunes "host" (though you need to sync it to a mac or PC like an iPhone or iPod) along with a couple of active speakers.

This also looks like an interesting piece of kit - though I've yet to see/hear one.

http://www.brennan.co.uk/

Though to be completely honest, I still generally get a CD off the shelves or listen to the radio!! I've not quite shaken off my Luddite tendencies.

Thanks. I don't want to go down the iTunes route, but the Brennan player looks interesting.

Steve

I use a Squeezebox which connects to my hifi and wirelessly to my PC, on the hard drive of which all my music is held. The sound quality is very good in my experience. The down side is that the PC must be switched on to use it.

http://www.logitechsqueezebox.com/products/overview.html

Jon

Steve, I think I was in a similar position.

I had an ageing bi-amped NAD system with Monitor Audio speakers and a Denon CD player. I wanted to down-size.

In the end I went for a very neat Sony (yes I still can't belive I did it!!!) surround system which has a small control unit which looks good on a coffee table, and 5 satelite speakers.

Airort express linked via an optical cable, the Remote APP and Bob's your transvestite auntie!!!

Seriously though, I know you said you don't want to go down the iTunes route, but for me the above system sounds great and may be worth a second thought. Didn't cost a fortune either.

Hope you find what's right for you.

Kind Regards,

Nigel

Now that I really have to remember!!


Actually, I just discovered that USB sticks have grown to 64Gb, so a simple system with a USB slot would probably be okay.

Now, about my collection of 78s.....

Steve

Yes I remember all that - and I have the Linn Sondek LP12 to prove it.




Yes, the re are quite a few systems around based on hard drives.

But - please - *not* MP3 - MP3 is not hi-fi, in fact it's pretty low-fi. It's best to take the CD into the system as un-compressed wav files.

In fact some places sell you 24/96 files to download (Linn Records for one) which are much better than CD quality.

MP3 is so low quality I can't listen to it at all because of the grunging it does to the music.

Having said that - I am sure that these hard-disk systems will take MP3 as well; but - please - use MP3 as sparingly as possible and use only the highest quality version (eg: 320 instead of 192).

My boyfriend has a Yamaha HD 1300 hard disk recorder / CD player. It holds music files in an uncompressed format....not MP3 so no loss in quality.

It has enough storage for about 150 albums.

The only thing is that Yamaha don't make them anymore but I reckon you could pick one up second hand / ebay.

Hope that helps?

Hmm, you really are a HiFi buff, aren't you!

To be honest, I don't care that much. I just want a system that can hold a lot of files. The truth is that I don't listen to much music at home because usually I'm playing it myself. But I do have a huge collection of mp3 files and would like to have access to them. Most are 256kb, ie the level at which the average person cannot tell the difference between mp3 and CD.

Of course, vinyl is a different matter!

Any important music, I listen to in the car because that's the only place I can be alone.

Steve

In that you can make plant pots out of rubbishy old records?

Actually more of a music lover.

MP3 just destroys the music - and it's more noticeable with classical.

That's why, when I record, I use the best microphones available and 24/96 recording - of course, more important is the instrument, the room and the musician.

I encode classical at 320 and that seems fine. Anything lower, you tend to get warbling on cymbal crashes and higher frequency instruments For rock/pop, 192 seems to be the absolute minumum for an acceptable result. That's my personal experience anyways

I "sort of" agree with Solari (for "average" domestic use), but, given the low cost of storage these days, I can't see much point in compression. In iTunes I stick with Apple Lossless.

BUT - going back to John's post. I have heard 24/96 masters and against my better judgement ('cos the maths say it shouldn't make any difference) I do think they sound better than 16/48. I've yet to hear any "one bit" recording.