In article , jimmy
wrote:
Hi,

Firstly, I am absolutely not a troll!

OK. :-)

She has decided she quite likes the look of Rotel kit and may allow me
to get that. However, when I phoned a hi-fi shop in the area to see if
they have Rotel in stock they sounded rather pretentious and fitted the
sterotype hi-fi nutter profile which puts me off going in

This kind of response is a sign that the people in the shop are more
concerned with grabbing your cash than in actually having any real
understanding of audio and giving you decent advice.

( I really don't want to spend £80 on a mains cable).

Nor should you have to.

Budget is not really a big consideration within reason - but I am
finding this a load of hassle and am close to caving in and going to
Comet and spending another £500 on a music centre again - are separates
really worth all this work - and I would really appreciate suggestions
as to where to buy and what to buy in the region of 1000 ukp or so -
remember, it must look pretty as well as sound good!

It would be useful if you could say a bit more about;

1) The kind of music you tend to prefer. (And how loud! :-) )

2) Do you use CD, LP, radio, etc regularly

3) Size and general furnishings of room.

4) Any particular facilities you require

These would help people to give more specific advice.

However in general I'd say that if you are willing to spend around 1000UKP
then you could get a pretty good audio system with carefully chosen
seperate units. My personal suggestion would also be to spend a fair
fraction on the speakers as my experience is this is the area which pays
the most dividend once the other items are of reasonable quality.

NAD do tend to be reasonably regarded. However so do Rotel. I also think
that Creek tend to go unjustly overlooked. So there are various
possibilities, but more info would help us make more specific suggestions.

Slainte,

Jim

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