Confused about how to improve my audio system!

@Antonio_Bendezu long speech but very real, funny you mentioned the Klipsch, I own a pair of P37F and love them

You emphasize the music enjoyment and that is something we forget about when going the audiofool path (personal experience)

The only little thing I may add for our friend here is he is focusing in “digital” music. I have a friend that got vinyl turntables, then reel to reel tapes to record the vinyl, the vinyl itself are recorded from digital masters so you lose some things in between. What you hear is very conditioned to what comes in, same with food, you cook with good ingredients and the result is good, (except for pizza which is always good) anyways my point is there are digital masters that possibly sound best than vinyl recorded from bad masters. Or so I think. So going full digital is not a bad thing (Like I used to think before) as availability of good SQ music is there.

On order, thanks. I think connecting all three ways is a great excuse to stage some listening parties, do some not too inebriated A/B/C tests, see if anyone can hear a difference, prolly get more advice.

But the general tenor of advice I’m hearing is that for consumer-grade mass-produced components, interconnect cables don’t make much difference, as there’s likely to be enough imprecision, crosstalk, etc. in the components themselves to swamp any interconnect issues.

One of the optical inputs on the Onkyo is already connected via fibre to an output on the Roon Core device.

Which, if I understand this correctly, defeats the tone control on the front face of the Onkyo. Thanks.

Antonio, thanks for the long and detailed response. You put a lot of thought into that! Right now, I’m trying to build a “map” of that place, so that I can see what the different routes to it are. But, yes, I intend to eventually spend some money, once I have a better idea of the terrain.

Now that’s just a great rule of thumb!

Yes, I was thinking the same thing.

Very specific! Thanks.

I hope you feel better soon. :slight_smile: Let me recommend Asleep at the Wheel’s RIDE WITH BOB as an album that always cheers me up. Again, many thanks.

Yes, I was wondering about that. So, price aside, which pair of speakers offers the best value for the money?

The same reason I bought my Naim Atom all in one and sounds awesome, less box count, maximum pleasure.

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Looks like a very nice unit, and not mind-blowingly expensive, either. Is it Roon-ready? Still need speakers, though.

Best value for money is a very difficult question. It can exist at many levels. I consider my $100,000 Meridian DSP speakers good value for the money. Today I would look at Kii for $15,000 as great value. And the Kef LS50W for $2,200. All of them active digital.

When looking at these prices, remember these are not speakers but complete audio systems.

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A lot of people on this forum like KEF LS50W speakeres. A complete package - speaker, amp, DAC, and Roon endpoint. Nothing more to buy, but the stands.

There seem to be some quality control issues, but if you buy from a dealer that should be, if worse comes to worse, only a minor hassle.



Sure. The price is not the issue; but before I spend it, I want to know enough about why the price is what it is, to understand the value proposition. Though the DSP 8000s would still be too big for my current room; maybe when I move.

Thanks, I’d noticed that the Roon team went out of their way to support these even without RAAT (assuming I read that right). I figured one of them owned a pair.

What? No Dynaudio Focus XD?

Just to be clear - LS50Ws are RAAT. They are a complete endpoint by themselves.

Don’t know if you realized that.

I don’t have a pair. I don’t like totally integrated systems. Just saying …

Thanks, no, I hadn’t realized that. I knew they were an endpoint, but I thought a different KEF-specific protocol was used, akin to the Chromecast integration.

I think that is not entirely true Slim
;

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Yep its fully Roon ready, also supports, Spotify connect, Airplay and Chromecast. Yes you need speakers. But you always will whatever route you go.If you go for active speakers you need a decent endpoint to serve them. so either way you need an endpoint and speakers.

There is so much out there and so many things to consider, but to start somewhere (alternatively to the KEFs and ELACs) I highly recommend the active ATC SCM40A. If you can audition them somewhere, do it. They are not digital, they just sound good :wink: http://atcloudspeakers.co.uk/hi-fi/loudspeakers/entry-series/scm40a/

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No CD support, right – no built-in player?

I was looking at the Marantz KI-Ruby set-up coming out this year. They call it an SACD player, but it’s really an external DAC with a CD player as well. Seems like a nice way to go. I don’t see Marantz on the Roon list of hardware partners, though.

Thanks. The fact that they take a separate pre-amp means things like CD players and turntables could also be used. What’s a compatible Roon-ready preamp?

No but you can hook up a cd player to it as it has analogue or digital inputs on the back.

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Alternately you could pick up an Oppo uDP 203 or 205 disc player as some of the those are Roon Ready and are well respected as CD players, but you would need to have either a seperate amp/speakers or active speakers.

Hmm, a Roon endpoint, but not RAAT. Is that it? What was all the hubbub a few months ago?

Proprietary nonsense, in it!

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I’ve been corrected. You are right. An endpoint, but not a RAAT endpoint. Apologies.