Speaker review - part somethingorother (I have no other life)

[azekeil]

Now I have some Dynaudio Audience 122s. Well balanced sound - more solid than the Spendor S6s, which I now consider to be quite finicky. They take a long while to run in apparently, and are currently lacking bass. I'm very seriously thinking about getting these (£550 for the pair) as a surround sound pack - fronts, rears and center for ~£1000. If I did that then I'll need a surround sound amp, which Audio T just happen to be doing the Arcam AVR200 and DV89 that we so liked at the Bristol Sound and Vision show for half price - again ~£1000 for both the amp and DVD/CD player.

My problem is that I don't know if I want to pay an extra £500 for the DVD/CD player (Audio T have an AVR200 second hand for £500) when I will most likely be using my computer for it through a VGA projector. Ah well I'll work that out eventually.

So, ~£2000 on hifi/AV which I can pay back by not having any new toys for 10 months while I repay my high-interest account £200 a month. I'll probably do it.

Comments

?computer? VGA projector?

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

... ARGHHH! :-)

At least I use an XGA projector <grin>

If you are a true hifi snob, then the idea of using a computer to generate your video and digital sound output should be filling you with dread (jitter, spurious R/F signals everywhere etc.)

And given the pace that DVD and CD machines have dropped in price while increasing in performance, well, I guess you have to make a stand at some point in time and say "I'm going to spend what it takes *today* to get the system I want, and just sob next year when the prices drop, again!"

e.g. standalone DVD recorders. Two xmas ago, 800-1000 pounds, last xmas 400 pounds, this xmas 119 pounds, next year almost certainly under 100 pounds (and the ones with hard disks should drop as well).

And of course there's blu-ray/whatever coming soon ... and you will probably want a DVD player that can do proper DVD-A (and perhaps SACD?) which I don't believe any of the computer ones do (though I could be wrong about that, anyone know?)

If you can buy it for 500 this year and sell it for, say, 300 next year, then the effective cost is only four pounds a week, and that's well worth it. Keep it for two years and sell it for 100 pounds then and you've got the same deal (assuming no repairs). So I'd be tempted to say "go ahead, get the DVD/CD player" provided you're really happy with the output and it's not missing anything essential (like progressive scan for PAL and NTSC and/or component output if your projector can take those).

Component output and prog scan ...

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

... I hadn't realised how "commoditised" those had become ... the 27.99 player I got from Aldi two weeks ago has both Prog Scan and component outputs on it! (Doesn't have a set of 5.1 connectors though, so I'll have to take the digital out to the amp to decode).