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I'm getting old, my hearing should be getting worse. Instead...

Slutmonkey57b

Equipment is getting shoddy and frankly awful.

I spent two days trawling around the big box stores looking for something that should be fairly simple; a reasonable sounding iphone dock, or a CD mini system. Nothing to break the bank, and something that the last time I went buying (admittedly late nineties/early noughties) was easy to find.

Everything I listened to (brought a cd and audio in cable) was awful, with two exceptions which I would charitably describe as "acceptable" (denon dm40 and sonos play 5) until I looked at the price tag (500 quid) at which point I thought someone was having a laugh. The build quality on most of them was horrific, the user interfaces were either non existent or impossible, and the sound wss universally muddy, incoherent, sounding underwater, and that's after resetting whatever eq had been fiddled with.

I am not the sort of bloke who buys reference monitor speakers but my car should not sound better than a denon system which gets rave reviews. The last system I bought was a Sony which cost about €200 and would, by the sound of my experiments today, rate as audiophile equipment sold by Cloney! It wasn't even the best sounding or most expensive option at the time, just a middle of the road unit with a snazzy vertical load drawer.

So are there actually any options here? After hearing for myself what systems that are getting awards and 5 star reviews are actually like, I'm very very wary.

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Ferrari3600

Do you go to live concerts?

Slutmonkey57b

Why, are they also getting worse?

andy1249

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

Equipment is getting shoddy and frankly awful.

I spent two days trawling around the big box stores looking for something that should be fairly simple; a reasonable sounding iphone dock, or a CD mini system. Nothing to break the bank, and something that the last time I went buying (admittedly late nineties/early noughties) was easy to find.

Everything I listened to (brought a cd and audio in cable) was awful, with two exceptions which I would charitably describe as "acceptable" (denon dm40 and sonos play 5) until I looked at the price tag (500 quid) at which point I thought someone was having a laugh. The build quality on most of them was horrific, the user interfaces were either non existent or impossible, and the sound wss universally muddy, incoherent, sounding underwater, and that's after resetting whatever eq had been fiddled with.

I am not the sort of bloke who buys reference monitor speakers but my car should not sound better than a denon system which gets rave reviews. The last system I bought was a Sony which cost about €200 and would, by the sound of my experiments today, rate as audiophile equipment sold by Cloney! It wasn't even the best sounding or most expensive option at the time, just a middle of the road unit with a snazzy vertical load drawer.

So are there actually any options here? After hearing for myself what systems that are getting awards and 5 star reviews are actually like, I'm very very wary.

Welcome to the mp3 generation.
What you are likely to find in the shops these days are crappy plastic systems to go along with the even crappier file formats that kids listen to these days.
Interfaces are nonexistent because what sells these days are network capable devices that hook up to itunes via phones and ipads. Thats how you control them.

To get anything decent you will have to go online.
Richer sounds and the like or hifi hut.
There are precious few places in Ireland where you can audition.

Slutmonkey57b

But what I don't get is how the denon got awards and good reviews saying it sounds amazing. At best, it's average. Which makes it very difficult to buy online when you can't trust the reviews.

andy1249

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

But what I don't get is how the denon got awards and good reviews saying it sounds amazing. At best, it's average. Which makes it very difficult to buy online when you can't trust the reviews.

From where though?
Print media like what hi fi?
If so, itts been a long time since any of those have had any integrity, their reviews these days are based purely on how much the manufacturer pays in ad revenue.
In an online world its the only way print media can survive.
Again , you need to go online to find honest independant reviews.

Slutmonkey57b

Any sources? Again, stuff getting hundreds of 5 star reviews on Amazon are pieces of brittle junk with awful sound and no interface.

Advbrd

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

Any sources? Again, stuff getting hundreds of 5 star reviews on Amazon are pieces of brittle junk with awful sound and no interface.

I have a number of Sonos components for convenience (bedrooms, office) and find they provide reasonable quality sound with lossless input. They do however pale in comparison to my now 20 year old Linn/Marantz/Nad main system but it cost a lot more. Still, after 20 years with no degradation in sound quality, I am pretty pleased. You would be hard pushed to find a reasonable stereo system for 200 euro.

GreenFolder2

The issue is definitely one of a generation that's been raised on a diet of very poor quality, compressed audio and tracks produced to create a wall of equalised sound.

It will improve as there's really no reason for all this deep compression anymore - storage is cheap and enormous and bandwidth is cheap and highly available. I mean I was getting 73Mbit/s on a mobile phone on 4G this morning. Fixed line broadband is also vastly improved for most people too.

I think we're over the MP3 hump and heading back towards decent audio again. It'll just take time.

Slutmonkey57b

Well that's a load of balls. Thanks for the confirmation guys.

ZENER

At a guess I'd say we are from similar generations. I detest these Sonos and Bose yokes that seem to have taken over. Beats headphones are another criminal in the lineup. There's nothing pure or nice about the sound quality from them. Over boosted bass and treble from small speakers with crap amplifiers in cases that rattle and roll - awful things.

Go back to the 80's and 90's when the likes of Technics and Pioneer produced some decent sounding Midi systems that would murder these pieces of rubbish not only sonically but also in connectivity.

Ken

Slutmonkey57b

Having reflected on the fact that the car sounds better than the denon I have been toying with the idea of hooking up a car Stereo in the kitchen. Usb, bluetooth,nfc, controllable by phone app, cd and they should be sturdier than the dross in the shops, for under 200 quid.

Will let you know how I get on.

ZENER

There's a thread here somewhere from a few years ago by someone who did just that. Don't forget to factor in a decent power supply

Ken

km991148

I picked up a denon m37 about 12 years ago now and have been happy enough with it - but it was closer to 250 at the time - dont think I would pay 500 and the UI is shocking

mossym

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

Having reflected on the fact that the car sounds better than the denon I have been toying with the idea of hooking up a car Stereo in the kitchen. Usb, bluetooth,nfc, controllable by phone app, cd and they should be sturdier than the dross in the shops, for under 200 quid.

Will let you know how I get on.

not a great idea. the reason cars sound good is they are a very small enclosed space, and they make thousands of them with the exact same shape and size, meaning they can tune them specifically.

throw them in a proper room and they won't be any better. it's not like they use superb components, they typically use the same or similar Class-D amplifiers you find in flat panel TV's.

the mass public has moved to a point where it is quantity, not quality. give me lots of music, it's doesn't matter how it sounds. so the mass produced units that you find in stores cater to that, cheap, and loud. that's about it. most of the music played on them anyway has had it's dynamic range compressed so much there is little chance of it sounding good.

why not go second hand? get an old arcam amp and a set of small bookshelves, wouldn't cost a huge amount and would whip most units of 1 to 2x it's price

Advbrd

mossym wrote: »

not a great idea. the reason cars sound good is they are a very small enclosed space, and they make thousands of them with the exact same shape and size, meaning they can tune them specifically.

throw them in a proper room and they won't be any better. it's not like they use superb components, they typically use the same or similar Class-D amplifiers you find in flat panel TV's.

the mass public has moved to a point where it is quantity, not quality. give me lots of music, it's doesn't matter how it sounds. so the mass produced units that you find in stores cater to that, cheap, and loud. that's about it. most of the music played on them anyway has had it's dynamic range compressed so much there is little chance of it sounding good.

why not go second hand? get an old arcam amp and a set of small bookshelves, wouldn't cost a huge amount and would whip most units of 1 to 2x it's price

Yeah, I second that. My main kit is 20 years old and probably worth less than a grand resale. You would be hard pushed to beat it with new equipment worth 5k.

mossym

or something like this? (not mine, just picked one on adverts) i have the mini version and it produces an impressive sound for the size. would much prefer it to sonos.

http://www.adverts.ie/home-audio/bowers-wilkins-zeppelin-air/11552952

denismc

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

Having reflected on the fact that the car sounds better than the denon I have been toying with the idea of hooking up a car Stereo in the kitchen. Usb, bluetooth,nfc, controllable by phone app, cd and they should be sturdier than the dross in the shops, for under 200 quid.

Will let you know how I get on.

I tried that a while back, the missus wasn't too impressed.

bullpost

Got this got about €250 and am happy with sound quality:

http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/audio-and-headphones/audio/hifi-systems-and-speakers/jvc-ux-d100-wireless-traditional-hi-fi-system-usb-connector-10119017-pdt.html

SachaJ

What speakers were the DM40 hooked up to?

I have a DM39 hooked up to a pair of Monitor Audio RX1's and I think it sounds fine.

Also any of those hifi mags can only say what sounds great to them - purely subjective. And yeah rumours have been going around for years that What HiFi? ratings are directly proportional to that brands advertising budget.

VictorRomeo

So auditioning that sort of audio at a big box is guaranteed to leave you with bad impression. The DM40 is a nice unit, but the speakers it's supplied with are very poor. It needs a relatively small space and hooked up to the MARX1s as SachaJ suggests will sound good.

I have a good mix of stuff around my house mostly based on Sonos for casual listening. A few Play:5 speakers upstairs and a Connect Amp hooked up to MA Silver1 speakers and it's pretty damn decent. I stream my own ripped FLAC, but I alse get lossless FLAC streamed from Deezer. The other thing about Sonos - as has been said many times before; you're getting so much more than as speaker - the control software is second to none. The multiroom is fantastic. I got some Bluesound on demo from Cloney and it does sound better, but my missus said it's either me or the Sonos... She love's it. The room correction works pretty well too...

I've got some fairly juicy Classe amplification and B&W 800 series speakers in our den for critical listening and movies, and again I stream my own stuff to Marantz reference network player.... But for casual listening around the house I'm very happy with Sonos.

Don't discount. However, if you want something where quality sounds, separates are still the only way to go. That or maybe some entry level Naim

Slutmonkey57b

But this is my fundamental point; it never used to be necessary to buy monitor speakers and separates to get reasonable sound. Denon would never have shipped a €500 unit with crappy speakers in the first place. It wouldn't have been necessary to go to Cloney to get a system tuned to individual rooms to maximise perfection of sound just to move from the level of "20 quid single speaker AM radio" to CD quality sound. And while a superstore isn't a good environment for auditioning good quality equipment, it certainly doesn't account for the fundamental defects in the stuff on offer.

As to apps and vendor specific wireless streaming... Consumers are in for a shock once they realise what will happen when vendors go tits up, force obsolescence, get taken over, or stop development.

Dartz

My home setup is 'basic'.

It's a Turntable, an Xbox one, a PC, all hooked into an Marantz SR7400 aquired second-hand, driving a basic powered subwoofer, and pair of Mordaunt-Short Avant 904 speakers, with a smaller on in the centre.

The sound quality out of even a basic system, compared to everything else I've had, is stunning.

It beats the bollocks of the old philips all-in-one home theatre yoke we had for years until the smoke got out - and is better for the turntable than the basic Logitect 2.1 PC system I had hooked up to it.

It'll actually do 7.1 sound if I had the speakers.

Unfortunately my ears are full of wax.