I don't use Spotify or any streaming service.
Once I find something I like, I buy the CD which comes without DRM and similar crap.
My streaming server is built with the finest baby frogs, dew picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in finest quality spring water, lightly killed, and then sealed in a succulent Swiss quintuple smooth treble cream milk chocolate envelope and lovingly frosted with glucose.
After a crappy childhood without any music (except for the church songs plus the abuse afterwards) I got my own stereo set when I was earning my first own money.
And I decided I wanted a good stereo set, so after a couple of years collecting the stuff I wanted I had:
Quadral Titan Mk 3 speakers
Sony TA-E88 preamp
Nakamichi PA-7E power amp
2 EAR 519 Tube amps
Audio Geometry FDN3S active crossover
Sony CDP557 ESD CD player (the only one that had a net weight of 18 kg (!!)
2 Nakamichi 680zx tape decks
and a custom make turntable with a denon studio direct drive thingie, an SME3012 and an Ortofon SPU GM
this was absolutely over the top, and I had to move, so I could not really lug around half a metric ton of stereo equipment.
But. Sound reproduction was fantastic. When playing symphonies, you felt as if you were sitting right in the concert hall.
I fiddledidummed a bit over the years and now am back to having something that I would call pretty decent.
Which translates to:
Quadral Vulkan Mk 3 (those are transmission line speakers that can be driven in a 2 or 3 way active configuration)
Sony TA-E 86B (similar to the 88, but lacking one Tape hookup plus a slightly downsized phono section)
Threshold T200 power amp
2 EAR 519 mono tube amps (not yet hooked up)
FDN3S active crossover (not yet hooked up)
Nakamichi RX505
Denon DP47 turntable
Nakamichi OMS 7 Mk2
Even though the weight of this stuff only approaches a quarter of a metric ton, the music reproduction quality is as good as you can wish for if your funds are somewhat limited (it's still bloody expensive ...)
Since I do not have a tuner and I am getting old and lazy I plus inspired by a friend of mine who had technical problems getting his high end audio streamer to function properly I decided to build a prototype of the next gen audio server for him. Easy to set up (use a web browser or a tablet), high capacity (currently 1 TB SSD) low heat dissipation, high end output (124db s/n, 192khz, Burr Brown DACs). And I have the prototype here, and decided to keep it (or a build-alike) for myself.
Which I did.
Can it play internet radio ? well, several hundred stations in as high a quality as they care to provide. Can it do automatic CD repository management ? you bet.
Is the sound quality sufficient: we (my high end dealer and myself) were quite impressed with the output which is as good as can reasonably be expected.
Should we bother with Spotify ?
nope. We have a music collection which is big enough. Should we run out of space: the server is easily expandable, even with a NAS.
Do we like modern boom boxes ?
well, about as much as surstromming.
Hope that answers the question.
Yes, Zucca, you may call me an audiophool ... I don't care. But I won't slaughter nice test instruments to steal the tubes. The ones I need are readily available.
Home
Help
Search
Login
Register
