The Afterword

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Hi Res – Pros and Cons

by 92 Comments

Virtually every audio or music forum I visit features someone or other proselytising about the benefits or otherwise of hi res music. In some cases, this includes people unwilling to even accept CD quality, versus 24 bit/ 96 kHz or even 192 kHz formats. I have never been able to tell the difference personally which I accept may possibly be due to my ageing ears or perhaps my audio setup, but surely factors such as mastering, dynamic range, room acoustic treatment etc have far more impact than sampling rate and so on? People seem to get very worked up about it for some reason. Any thoughts?

ATM : Roon or Plex

by 28 Comments

Does anyone use music server thingies such as Roon or Plex? I am using Plex at the moment but although it has some good features it can be a bit flakey, particularly playing nicely with my Sonos system. Roon is more recent, is a lot more expensive than Plex but is supposed to offer great navigation and discovery possibilities. It also operates differently from Plex, in that you control audio output (eg to Sonos) from Roon itself. It would be useful to hear from anyone who has experience of these services, particularly Roon.

ATM – mini hifis?

by 12 Comments

The time may be nigh to replace my old hifi. It’s a great Pioneer system, but its now over 25 years old. The CD players no longer work, and it’s now mainly used to play the TV through, either films/TV or music via an Apple TV box. It gives great sound – Im not sure what the output is but I can never put it up to full volume. Now, how would your modern mini hifi speakers compare – most seem to be about 30w output (?) – have they moved on a lot in 25 years? Could I just connect my old speakers up to the TV or does it have to run through an amp? I very rarely actually put on a CD these days – listening via iTunes library instead – but I’d like to still have the option. So does anyone have a favourite mini hifi they’d recommend? And what’s the diff between mini and micro hifi?