Gear for new apartment

NDC

Hi.
Just bought a new apartment, don't have any tv/hifi/cinema system etc.
I want to kit myself out with everything.

Can anyone advise me on what to buy?

I'm a musician, the music I'll be listening to on it would be classical music, heavy metal and classic rock, if that makes a difference to what I'd buy?

Should I just buy from one place all in one go, or buy it in pieces?

Consider me a beginner on all this. I suppose I'll be wanting tv, cd player, tuner, amp, speakers, cinema system.

Any advice?

The Ritz

What's your priority, two channel HiFi or a home cinema system ? Whats your budget ? What kind of gear have you listened to up until now ? The answers might help folk advise you.........



Ritz.

gsp119

yamaha have some nice priced av amps 5.1 @ 299 for entry level.. pick up tv depending on your budget I suppose, speakers w/dale diamond 10.1 @ 249 pair

lots of options cheaper than above also out there

best of luck

F.Galway

Do you want to use your amp for music or movies?
The gear can be directed towards either as its hard to get one that has a good balance between both.A AVR would probably give you best of both worlds.Entry level Onkyo receiver starts at €200 or so.
For speakers you could go with a 5.1 system for your home cinema or buy seperates. Systems can be got for less than €200,a monitor audio would be a system worth considering.Or you could build up a system up over time, Wharfedale diamond 10.1 would be great fronts or if you want floorstanding speakers the eltax concept 400's get some great reviews and work out a bit cheaper than the Wharfedales.
Hope this helps ya.

cnocbui

As large a Panasonic plasma HD tv as you can afford.

If you value sound quality, then the one thing you should think about the most is the speakers. They are pretty much the absolute limiting factor in the final sound quality your ears perceive, as they are the one component that translates electrical signals into vibrations in the air.

Now good speakers tend to be expensive. Although the world has gone surround sound mad, I would suggest thinking about getting a stereo pair of speakers, rather than 5, because IMO, two good speakers can produce a nicer sound than 5 mediocre ones. So for a given budget, spending the money on two good speakers should yield a better overall sound quality than spreading it over 5.

If you were to get a pair of speakers and an AV amp to drive them, you could always add more speakers later as finances allowed.

I would say find the speakers first then look for electronics to drive them.

Idleater

cnocbui wrote: »

They are pretty much the absolute limiting factor in the final sound quality your ears perceive, as they are the one component that translates electrical signals into vibrations in the air.

Can ... open ... worms ... everywhere ...

NDC

Thanks, everyone, for replying.
I want to get this sorted soon enough, so as soon as I do I'll repost.

Thanks again for the advice...

Slaphead07

cnocbui wrote: »

If you value sound quality, then the one thing you should think about the most is the speakers. They are pretty much the absolute limiting factor in the final sound quality your ears perceive, as they are the one component that translates electrical signals into vibrations in the air.

Utter nonsense. Unless you have magic speakers that can change a poor source into a great one.

cnocbui

Slaphead07 wrote: »

Utter nonsense. Unless you have magic speakers that can change a poor source into a great one.

When I was a lad, I took some wire, and an old earphone plug and some small crocodile clips and soldered up a lead that allowed me to connect my 9 transistor AM radio up to one of the Thorens speakers of my dads HiFi as an experiment to see how it would sound.

And it sounded fantastic - compared to the radio on its own playing through it's own speaker.

Many years later, I replaced the speakers in my mothers car with a pair of 6x9 two way Marantz car speakers, mounted to some 18mm wodden boards. It was just powered by the standard AM/FM stereo radio that was in the car - didn't even have a cassette. The improvement in sound quality was vast.

I could recount several other examples if you would like.

Let me hypothesise an example based on my current HiFi. I could take a portable AM/FM radio with stereo earphone socket and it's own speaker, and wire it up from the headphone socket to drive my B&W main speakers directly, and I will put money on it, that it will sound at least ten times better than if I take the output of one channel of my HiFi playing a CD, and hook it up to the speaker from the am/fm radio.

In other words, reference class electronics hooked up to a POS speaker will sound like a POS. A POS source, hooked up to reference class speakers will sound a damn site better.

Of course decent electronics powering decent speakers is the obvious ideal, but the fundamental limiting components are the speakers.

cnocbui

nereid wrote: »

Can ... open ... worms ... everywhere ...

That was without even trying.

Slaphead07

cnocbui wrote: »

but the fundamental limiting components are the speakers.

No, it's whatever the weakest link in the loom is.

The Ritz

Mod Comment

cnocbui,

If you value sound quality, then the one thing you should think about the most is the speakers. They are pretty much the absolute limiting factor in the final sound quality your ears perceive, as they are the one component that translates electrical signals into vibrations in the air.

This is not the first time that you've chosen to make these comments on a thread in the HE forum - it's simlply not true, despite whatever you believe or whatever your system is.

When you follow it with this response to nereid:

Quote:
Originally Posted by nereid

Can ... open ... worms ... everywhere ...

That was without even trying.

... I can only conclude that you know that these comments are going to cause difficulties. As far as I'm concerned that's trolling. You've been asked in the past to adjust your posting on these forums and it appears that you chose to continue to post opinions designed to cause arguments.

A one month ban will give you some time to decide whether you want to post here in future.


Ritz

The Ritz

Mod Comment:


@NDC,

I'm closing this thread as it has gone off-topic from your original query - sorry for that. Please feel free to start another thread if you want to raise any other queries once you've had a think about what you want to do.


Cheers,

Ritz.