On Sat, 03 Jan 2004 17:38:06 +0000, Wally wrote:

Alex Butcher wrote:

This raises an interesting point; a while ago, I was planning on
building a modest home cinema/hi-fi rig and my plan was to treat it
much the same as I treat building computers; good quality central
components (motherboard, PSU, DAC/Amplifier) and Human IO devices
(monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers) and spend what I can afford on the
rest (CPU, memory, video card, CD transports). The logic behind that is
that I
don't want to spend large amounts of money on components that rapidly
become obsolete, but instead spend it on components that will be the
last to be upgraded and for which good quality/stability is necessary.

I can see the thinking regarding computers - two components that can be
bought for a reasonable price/performance trade-off are CPU and hard
disk. But what parts of an audio system quickly become obsolete, such
that the same thinking can be applied?

Digital components such as CD/DVD players for a start, it would seem.
Analogue components admittedly (much) less so. But even then, these are
probably components you'd more readily want to upgrade in favour of better
components.

An example of the sort of systems I'm proposing would be:

~130GBP CD player
~100GBP DVD player
~150GBP HT receiver

vs.

~ 50GBP DVD player
~320GBP HT receiver
10GBP digital cable

Same overall price, but I would expect that the DAC in that ~320GBP
receiver is better than either of the DACS in the ~100GBP-range CD/DVD
players, and further, that the amplifier in the ~320GBP device is better
than the ~150GBP device. I wonder whether anyone could tell which was the
cheaper CD/DVD transport...

Of course, taking my approach literally, you'd want to get a HT decoder
and seperate amplifiers, so that the decoder (rapidly changing) can be
upgraded without having to ditch the (probably perfectly good) amplifiers.
Sadly, doing that would be rather expensive compared with an all-in-one.


Best Regards,
Alex.
--
Alex Butcher Brainbench MVP for Internet Security: www.brainbench.com
Bristol, UK Need reliable and secure network systems?
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