On Sat, 03 Jan 2004 15:47:40 +0000, Fish wrote:

I'm moving to a smaller house soon and alas my present audio stuff will
need changing for a smaller, more neighbour-friendly set-up.

At present I have a Bryston pre/power combo (250-watter) and a pair of
large Dynaudio floorstanders. Nothing-special CD-player as imho cd-players
are nothing special.


Sheesh - 250W is enough to cook on.... :-)

Have a look at any mid-price, fairly sensitive, half-decent speakers &
couple them with a little pure class A amp. Valves are nice... (you could
even build your own! I've just built a MOSFET headphone amp that would
scale up quite easily. I bet it only cost me £30 or so if you include
the bits from the "scrap box".) You may be surprised at how little power
you really need; most people can get away with about 3W to 5W per channel
under real-life surroundings. Remember that to double the volume you have
to square the power, so 250W is about twice the volume of a 25W amp, which
in turn is about twice the volume of a 5W amp! The more sensitive your
speakers are, the better. The music will usually sound clearer and
"faster" without necessarily being a lot louder.

--
Mick
http://www.nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini information
Also at http://www.mixtel.co.uk where the collection started.
Currently deserting M$ for linux... :-)