For the FAO of stereoists

[KiwiDave]

Did you ship the speakers?

Update on this is that as yet, none of it has left the UK, all still at mates house wrapped up ready to go.

Longer story is it was supposed to be leaving via air freight using a friend's assistance but that's on hold temporarily. May end up needing to use different shipping methods completely, and if so the speakers would likely be nonviable to ship as opposed to buying new ones.

I should have taken the details down of all the gear before I wrapped it all.

[KiwiDave]

Coming back to this thread to ask for opinions from our assembled audio nerds. Dad's gear arrived at my place yesterday and I've unboxed it now and taken some images to show you.

First up the amplifiers, a pair of identical Denon PMA-520A units:








Then the CD player, a Denon DCD-520AE unit:





And then we're into the weirder stuff. Dad was many moons ago, an audio engineer and among many things built his own amps and speakers from scratch for his local church. As a consequence he had a habit of studying wiring diagrams for audio gear before buying them and went through a phase of buying stuff from Tandy (remember them?) once he'd decided the item was legit. The graphic equaliser below is the first of those that remain, a Genexxa 31-9082:






And then the speakers, which unfortunately have arrived damaged, Realistic Pro-2's:





And then finally, this really heavy amp which looks as though it's designed for being rack mounted and has the mother of all heat sinks on it. This is a Samson Servo-170 (I think):








I know some of this, if not all is probably of limited to no use. The costs I paid to ship it here were fixed up to a certain square meter and in essence most of this was free to get here. I'd have paid the shipping costs just for my Dad's tools so this stuff is almost free. All that to say if it's all shyte, you won't hurt my feelings by saying so.

My goal is to hope I can add a streaming doofer and maybe some decent speakers to this and see if I can make a decent stereo out of it. But this isn't my wheelhouse at all, so all comments and help appreciated.

[mik]

All IMHO :

1. CD player should be fine
2. Denon Amps have reasonable power (2x70w) and tone controls. Should be OK. I don't have experience of using multiple amps simultaneously, so my thinking is based around using either one solo. Look v clean in the pics.
3. I'd ignore the other amp. It's a chunky "PA" stlyee thing, but still only musters 2x85w.
4. I'd also ignore the EQ. I don't expect it's necessary
5. Speakers are no great loss. I can remember staring at these in Tandy as a kid - they are indeed whoppers, woofers are massive 10" (maybe 12" ?) but the specs confirm they are pretty rubbish. 50hz low end from a speaker that size is crazy. My dad had a pair of their smaller speakers (8" woofers) back in the day and they were nothing special at all. I'd try instead to get a hold of @scotta spec Q-Accoustic 3050i as they are fabulous value for the sound quality/volume they provide (circa £450 UK) and look good too.

That would give you a working setup, that uses some of your dad's components.

Challenges:
1. You'll need a bluetooth/wifi unit if you want to play music from spotify or competitors. I haven't looked at this subject area for many years (I still use a Neet Airstream wifi thingy on our old NAD amp in the bedroom) but I am sure there are a number of possible options here.
2. I'd personally want to add a powered sub to give the system some "real" bottom end, but amps this age don't have dedicated sub outputs, and your Denon doesn't have a pre-amp output that would allow you to create a feed into a sub. If you "need" properly chunky bass tones / punchy kick drum replication, I believe you'd need to replace with a newer amp (think £450 UK ish for a decent amp, and £350 UK ish for a sub). Many current amps have bluetooth capability so you can just stream to them from your phone etc. I appreciate it's essentially a new amp + speakers, and the only bit of your dad's kit you'd be using would be the CD.... so whilst it would definitely be a better option acoustically, it might not meet your desires.

[NGRhodes]

Dennon kit, is all nice, in the lower end of Hi-Fi, a huge amount of sound quality for the money when new.
Speakers are cheap Tandy/Radioshack own brand. Not much loss in those being broken TBH.
Don't know much about the EQ and power amp.

[Sundayjumper]

I agree. Keep the Denon stuff, stick the EQ & power amp on trademe (not worth much, but for a few bucks someone will make use of them), bin the speakers.

[Gavster]

Yep, and buy one of the Wiim streamers to access all the digital stuff

https://www.wiimhome.com/wiimpro/overview

[scotta]

Im unsure what he's used the two denon amps for. With no pre-outs on them they've not been daisy chained. He may possibly have used the graphic equalizer to split the channels to the Denons and run one amp per channel. I dont really see any benefit on that however.

Speakers - Yeah they look average and are no loss IMO.

You have the basis for two systems in my view.

1. Use one of the denon amps and buy a new set of decent floor Standers - Such as my Q-Acoustics.

2. Again buy new floor standers and use the graphic equalizer connected to the power amp.

Add the CD player and hook up a laptop or use an ipad for streaming on a phono lead. Another option would be to use an echo dot with a phono output. Thats what i do in my garage connected to a panasonic 2.1 Amp & Sub setup.

The spare denon amp could be used in a smaller office setup with some bookshelf speakers.This is how i use my old yamaha with a set of Gale Monitors in my office.

[KiwiDave]

All valuable feedback thank you gents. So the speakers of choice are these Q Acoustics 3050i is what you all seem to be saying? https://www.soundlab.co.nz/q-acoustics/ ... akers.html

I did read quite a bit of stuff in the months between posts on this topic about Q Acoustics stuff, some reviews seemed to say they were better suited to home cinema than music but I can't remember now if they were referring to a new version or another version.

I like the idea of an office setup a lot, though I don't know what the source would be, obviously I generally play music from my PC in there and I'm not sure one of the Denon amps will receive signal from a PC.

[mik]

3050i aren’t the worlds best speakers but at their price point (£450 in the UK - about NZ$940 ) I’d be surprised if there is anything to match them, and they’ll take the output of your Denon amp without a struggle. They’re defo not just for cinema.

[KiwiDave]

Thanks Mik - I guess having not really ever dug into hifi reviews I've no idea how to interpret them. I'd imagine there's a healthy amount of absolute purist where even a $50 Logitech set is held up against the finest speakers known to man. I think with most specialist hobbies you need to learn to decipher the angles, the closet sales pitches and the bullshit to get meaningful truth.

[Jobbo]

Is there a decent second hand market for hifi kit in NZ? I bought and sold quite a few things through Hifi Wigwam about 15 years ago - in the UK, obvs. But a similar scene in NZ may give you the opportunity to find very good value speakers, try for a bit and sell them without much or any loss if you find they don't suit you.

[scotta]

All valuable feedback thank you gents. So the speakers of choice are these Q Acoustics 3050i is what you all seem to be saying? https://www.soundlab.co.nz/q-acoustics/ ... akers.html

I did read quite a bit of stuff in the months between posts on this topic about Q Acoustics stuff, some reviews seemed to say they were better suited to home cinema than music but I can't remember now if they were referring to a new version or another version.

I like the idea of an office setup a lot, though I don't know what the source would be, obviously I generally play music from my PC in there and I'm not sure one of the Denon amps will receive signal from a PC.

Q-Acoustics - Deffo not just for home cinema. play load of music through mine. Used them in my office initially. Have also used them for house parties setup to my DJ Controller.

PC -> Denon - All you need is one of these phono to RCA cables. (Link for example - others are available)

https://amzn.eu/d/052c89uq

[scotta]

Is there a decent second hand market for hifi kit in NZ? I bought and sold quite a few things through Hifi Wigwam about 15 years ago - in the UK, obvs. But a similar scene in NZ may give you the opportunity to find very good value speakers, try for a bit and sell them without much or any loss if you find they don't suit you.

Yes and no - I find that as speakers age the rubber cone dampers perish and split. so don't buy older speakers id say.

[Jobbo]

Yes, second hand but not vintage would be a good idea. Though my Kef Q15.2 speakers bought around 2000/01 are still fine.

[KiwiDave]

There is a second hand market, but I'd call it either pot luck and fluke or everyone being an opportunist. A mate of mine in Wellington has a beautiful system at his place, all second hand, but largely bought through charity shops. It's the product of maybe 20yrs of buying stuff to find it's broken and then finally keeping the stuff that worked. I'm not sure I can be arsed with some kind of long-term mission, I just want to listen to music properly. I'd maybe dabble and keep an eye out for stuff once I have a system that works to try stuff in and out.

I was looking last night and it seems like the Wiim Ultra is a doable price for some decent quality for the streamer. Next recommended step up, a Cambridge Audio CXN100 is quite a jump cost wise.

[mik]

Next recommended step up, a Cambridge Audio CXN100 is quite a jump cost wise.

Last year I upgraded my 30+ yr old NAD amp with a Cambridge Audio AXR100D (and some new speakers). Bluetooth 5.0 built in so you can play from your phone via streaming apps.

For the same kinda $ as a CXN100 you could get the above and a decent sub…..

edit: ignore - when I glanced last night I thought the CXN100 was an amp also. Without having any idea how good it is, that would appear to be a lot of moolah for a Network Player.

[scotta]

Or for about £50 use an Amazon echo as a streaming device.

[Ascender]

Just been looking-in with interest...

What's the best source of amp reviews these days? I'm looking to get a new amp for the turntable, but ideally one which can also do home cinema as I'd like to get a decent setup for movies again in the new place.

[Jobbo]

If they review what you're interested in, I trust the US magazine Stereophile over any other review. They do thorough objective measurement as well as subjective testing: https://www.stereophile.com/index.html

The thing is, they do tend to focus on high end stuff and generally not cinema kit, so it's a bit of a lottery whether you'll find a review on there. So I tend to just google kit that interests me and see what comes up. For your purposes, I'd immediately look at the Marantz receivers, see which models have the spec you need and google the model for reviews. Of course, as soon as you start down the AV amp route you end up being pushed into looking at soundbars, which have a much higher wife acceptance factor...

[Ascender]

If they review what you're interested in, I trust the US magazine Stereophile over any other review. They do thorough objective measurement as well as subjective testing: https://www.stereophile.com/index.html

The thing is, they do tend to focus on high end stuff and generally not cinema kit, so it's a bit of a lottery whether you'll find a review on there. So I tend to just google kit that interests me and see what comes up. For your purposes, I'd immediately look at the Marantz receivers, see which models have the spec you need and google the model for reviews. Of course, as soon as you start down the AV amp route you end up being pushed into looking at soundbars, which have a much higher wife acceptance factor...

Thanks Jobbo

Luckily... it looks like I may have a separate space where I can get away with a proper amp and lots of speakers.

In the main room, we'll just have a TV with a pair of HomePods or similar.