HiFi Replacement

Hi All,

Just thought I would ask for opinion here as sure many of you will have varying stages of hifi equipment.

We have an Arcam Solo all in one cd/tuner/Amp thats served us well and has a good sound to it.
Its now well over ten years old and the display is starting to fail , but seems the only way to have it repaired, if they have they parts, is to send it off to Arcam via a local dealer, very long winded and costly.

This makes us think it might be better replacing it with a more modern system but being as we currently do not use streaming etc, a bit lost when it comes to all these modern options.

While we could save our limited number of CD to the PC, still not sure if we really need a unit with an inbuilt CD drive ? If we did need to play a disc, think we could do it via the PCs cd player instead and network it to the hifi?

We would like something that offers similar good audio quality to the Arcam Solo and seems there are only a few likely contenders in the sub £1k bracket.

Below are the three we are looking at on the web, but of course not something we can hear before we buy, which we would normally do.

Would be very interested to hear from anyone who owns one of these or of any better options.

thanks

Marantz Melody X All-in-One System Review

Marantz NR1200 Stereo Receiver Review

Review: Denon DRA-800H - Son-Vidéo.com: blog

 

Alexa ?

We have that in the kitchen for "Alexa : Play Classic FM" type stuff, and the occasional "Alexa : What country is Timbuktu in". Good enough sound quality ... but Alexa can pipe that streamed music through something better than its 3" speaker if you like ...

I haven't really bothered with HiFi of late, so if you want to sit and listen to music this may be no use, but we have Sonos in several rooms (and a carry-about speaker if we want music elsewhere). Sonos used to be totally plug-and-play, only piece of IT kit that I have ever been able to say that about, but the APP nowadays is seriously counter-intuitive. But ... it does work (if you walk from one room to the next the music in the next room isn't one-bar-behind, which is an issue with some competitors).

I "ripped" all my CDs onto my PC when I first got Sonos (blimey ... well over 10 years ago now) and it happily finds (and provides convenient lists / playlists etc.) all of those, but nowadays we mostly stream using Spotify. Quite fun at a dinner party - "What's you favourite tune from the 80's/whatever" and as each person pipes up some preference I queue them all up on Spotify on my phone under the table, and then that is the evening's playlist for my guests - courtesy of Sonos

Sonos comes as either a pre amp and you provide the AMP & Speakers, or an AMP and you provide the Speakers (or use Sonos ones) or as an integral Speaker. They are wireless, just the Master needs a connection to your home network,a nd they will "Mesh" between themselves. You can have different music in each room, simultaneously, or "join" two rooms together (temporarily)

Not cheap ...

 

Afraid things like Alexa etc will never get in this house, we are way too old fashioned for them and hate the idea of being spied on, as they are doing !

Sonos, yes, can see its appeal for a busy multi room household, but again not really one for us.
Seems they are about to bring out Sonus 2, so do wonder it they will cause upset for their Sonus 1 users by cutting off updates as they did recently ?

A more traditional hifi unit with the typical streaming etc will more than meet our needs.

Sound quality, via our speakers or headphones being the most pleasing aspect for us.

 

We have some good , if not large speakers and headphones, and we really only need them in the one room, so seems little to be gained by the Sonos, though can see its appeal for others.

Afraid it seems the Solo range has now been discontinued, though it was well over £1000 new.

Looking inside our original Solo. the build quality looks very good, lots of strong metal parts/ support etc etc, but for such a leading brand, its been a bit disappointing in reliability.
After 3 years the internal fuse holders became weak and needed replacing and at about 8 years half the control buttons failed , again needing replacing, which I was able to do.
Now the display unit is failing and Arcam will not supply just the part, only doing a repair themselves, if they have the parts left.

Its about 12 years old, and to be fair I only rate any electronic device to have a life of 5 years, though as we know may devices do manage to last much longer.

 

Us too .. we find it of limited value, but the things we use it for we definitely appreciate it. The spied on bit is overrated IMHO, neighbours with twitchy net curtains will know more about you than Big Tech ...

They backed down from that ... but there must come a time when they can no longer support the old kit ... Microsoft have expiry dates on their stuff, announced years in advance, and a premium Subscription for people who want to extend that by (I'm guessing) half a dozen years. Seems like a better solution than an overnight announcement!

Sonos works well in a single room - particularly if you only buy one unit!

Possibly an advantage for things that have no twiddly knobs and uses a phone APP instead? Less to fail I mean, particularly the mechanical bits of Display Screens, and when you replace your phone you get "a fresh set of knobs for everything"

 

I went from CDs to ripping all of my music to a NAS (hard disk on the network) and have more recently subscribed to Tidal streaming service. I no longer need my NAS as Tidal has all of my music and anything else that I could ever want.

I cant offer advice on the products that you list as I haven't used them. I have a Cyrus xa which is a streamer only and above that £1000 mark.

 

Just curious:

Would I be able to tell the difference between my Sonos and a Nose wave steaming something from Spotify? I'm not an audiophile, but reasonably musical ...

 

Hi,

Richer , like any other Arcam dealer will just have to send it back to Arcam, which costs us £40, then whatever to repair it, if the parts around, after 10+ years a bit of an ask, plus as said earlier its clearly getting more problematic to keep going.

Bose and Ruark, yes we have seen them, and the Ruark is said to be a very good sound but afraid we just do not like the look of either them. Nice if you have the decor to suit them.

 

The ones I have are (old model) Sonos AMPs plus Sonos own speakers.

So if I bought a Sonos Play:5, which is £499 ... actually presumably I need two of them for Stereo? then that's a £grand less two quid.

Is there a tangible benefit in spending more than that?

(I'm a Luddite on Audio, a £grand seems like quite a lot to me, but all the Audio stuff we have has been (what seems to me to be) expensive (e.g. surround sound on the TV)

Sorry to hijack thread, just curious to try to get a better feel for what benefits there might be.

 

No problem, helps us be aware of what out there.

Just a bit ironic that in our younger days it as me advising others about computers and such electronic stuff.

Things just change so fast these days when you are busy with other things .....

 

I've been in IT (software) all my life ... I hate IT, it always falls short of my expectations, rushed to market or driven by marketing rather than by IT (where IT pursued usability and operability, but Marketing don't care about that stuff but want Pixel-Perfect and features).

Very few pieces of IT kit do I admire. Ditto for eCommerce Websites ... mostly dire ... (spent a decade building those; back then, working with IT departments, the emphasis was "make it look as much like Amazon as possible" so that punters could use it easily. Then Marketing took over from IT department and overnight the websites actually letting customers checkout was no longer a priority, but rather that it was critical they had their own branding, looking and working different to everything else, and how they could leverage SEO without actually doing anything - like putting in decent descriptions ...

<Dismounts high horse ...>

 

Just a note on the Bose wave. Unless they've changed it recently the bass is really heavy and spoils the sound. There is no adjustment for bass or treble. We have one and its now in my wifes office as I find I'm focussed on how bad the bass sounds rather than the music so don't use it.