RichB
05-04-2007, 02:56 PM
(Disclosure: For those of you who do not know, I am a HiFi retailer)
OK, so as a old school hard core audio geek, I am a little late in getting to the whole digital music phenomena that most of you folks out there use today. Mostly because I am not of fan of listening to music with information missing (i.e. lossy compressed MP3 music files) with limited fidelity. With todays large amounts of cheap mass storage available these days I have started dabbling with music (losslessly compressed) stored on hard disk and way to play it through various HiFi set-ups.
One that I think I have mentioned before is the Sonos wireless digital music system (www.sonos.com)... which is very cool, but far from cheap (at least in non-audiophile terms :laugh: I sell power cords that cost more than... well lets just say lots and leave it at that :smile: ).
Now that I have finally moved into the 21 century and now have a Ipod, I loaded up some tunes on it (sourced from my vast CD library using apple lossless compression) and hooked it up to this neat little powered speaker system I got from this company called Audio Engine USA http://www.audioengineusa.com/ - the speakers are a very nicely designed using good quality drivers (soft dome tweeter and Kevlar woven fiber woofer) and a built in class AB 40W amp. The cabinets are very well built and solid and have facilities to allow you to plug in your Ipod or other external audio source (including a wireless apple airport express unit if I read correctly)
So, I plugged in the Ipod, cued up some Jack Johnson and pressed play. The results were surprising... smooth, surprisingly nice bass weight and texture, and very musical mids and highs. The speaker system retails for $350 and really reproduces music with good quality. No need for a receiver and its associated cost (also given that most cheap receivers sound like poo anyway). While you won't be able to produce concert hall volume levels with them, they well play plenty loud enough. I know most of the folks here have little or no dollars to spend on this kind of stuff, but I thought this was cool and cheap enough to bring to folks attention here if they looking to put something of quality together to play back (enjoy) music.
http://sigsound.com/images/IpodAEng_1.JPG
Set these babies up on a bookshelf or better yet, a invest in a set of speaker stands. Put some lossless compressed music (or high bit rate MP3s if you have to do MP3) on your Ipod and enjoy! This type of set-up will sound better than a cheap HT receiver and CD player played through some old beat up speakers sitting on the floor you got from your uncle George and take up much less space to boot.
Just this audiophiles 2 cents!
http://sigsound.com/images/IpodAEng_2.JPG
OK, so as a old school hard core audio geek, I am a little late in getting to the whole digital music phenomena that most of you folks out there use today. Mostly because I am not of fan of listening to music with information missing (i.e. lossy compressed MP3 music files) with limited fidelity. With todays large amounts of cheap mass storage available these days I have started dabbling with music (losslessly compressed) stored on hard disk and way to play it through various HiFi set-ups.
One that I think I have mentioned before is the Sonos wireless digital music system (www.sonos.com)... which is very cool, but far from cheap (at least in non-audiophile terms :laugh: I sell power cords that cost more than... well lets just say lots and leave it at that :smile: ).
Now that I have finally moved into the 21 century and now have a Ipod, I loaded up some tunes on it (sourced from my vast CD library using apple lossless compression) and hooked it up to this neat little powered speaker system I got from this company called Audio Engine USA http://www.audioengineusa.com/ - the speakers are a very nicely designed using good quality drivers (soft dome tweeter and Kevlar woven fiber woofer) and a built in class AB 40W amp. The cabinets are very well built and solid and have facilities to allow you to plug in your Ipod or other external audio source (including a wireless apple airport express unit if I read correctly)
So, I plugged in the Ipod, cued up some Jack Johnson and pressed play. The results were surprising... smooth, surprisingly nice bass weight and texture, and very musical mids and highs. The speaker system retails for $350 and really reproduces music with good quality. No need for a receiver and its associated cost (also given that most cheap receivers sound like poo anyway). While you won't be able to produce concert hall volume levels with them, they well play plenty loud enough. I know most of the folks here have little or no dollars to spend on this kind of stuff, but I thought this was cool and cheap enough to bring to folks attention here if they looking to put something of quality together to play back (enjoy) music.
http://sigsound.com/images/IpodAEng_1.JPG
Set these babies up on a bookshelf or better yet, a invest in a set of speaker stands. Put some lossless compressed music (or high bit rate MP3s if you have to do MP3) on your Ipod and enjoy! This type of set-up will sound better than a cheap HT receiver and CD player played through some old beat up speakers sitting on the floor you got from your uncle George and take up much less space to boot.
Just this audiophiles 2 cents!
http://sigsound.com/images/IpodAEng_2.JPG