Audio system
[last updated: 8 January 2012]
The video side of the system is shown here.
Green arrows are digital audio SP/DIF signals (either co-ax or optical); black arrows are analogue audio. My multi-channel Audiolab 8000AP pre-amplifier is my video 7.1 surround sound processor. Currently, however, I have it coupled to a minimalist stereo power amplifier, as a conscious decision.1
Sound in the (sur)round:
I have spent (literally) years trying and rejecting a series of surround sound solutions (going all the way back to initial Hafler systems in the Old Windsor flat over 35 years ago). I enjoyed a brief dalliance with the quadrophonic systems of the mid-1970s (Sansui's QS matrix stereo was for a while my choice, as I didn't have the room or the budget for a full-on Ambisonic system). Later came Dolby Pro-Logic (a simple matrix stereo system), followed by Dolby AC-3 (a 5.1 discrete digital channel solution initially available on LaserDiscs somewhat before DVDs were around).
AC-3 did offer good channel separation, but it was compressed and certainly doesn't begin to compare in quality to the latest lossless 7.1 surround sound formats that are on Blu-ray discs. Another step along the way was DTS, though that too had a restricted bit-rate when squeezed on to a DVD. And so it went on. The more channels, the more speakers, the more amplifiers, the less the chance of what you could call domestic harmony in the living room. It's getting crazy.
Amplifier: High-quality stereo music does more for me than whizz-bang bullets, car crashes, explosions, and helicopters flying around overhead. And I do a lot of stereo sound listening. So I've reverted to simple stereo — hence the Rotel RB-1572. It's a 250 watts per channel Class D amp with an on/off switch and, erm, that's all. Unless you count the over-bright blue ring of light (not Cherenkov radiation) around the on/off switch.
Previously, I had bridged two of the channels in my seven-channel AudioLab 8000X7 power amplifier reducing it from a 7.1 device to a "mere" 5.1 device to favour the front stereo pair with 150 watts each. But I recently managed to trigger its overload protection relays while listening at relatively high volume. (The AudioLab was showing about +5dB on its range of -90dB to +15 dB.) Having the extra 100 watts in "reserve" from the Rotel means I can get the volume I occasionally want without overloading anything. Magic. Definitely an advantage of a detached house.
Loudspeakers: I'm now using only my main stereo front2 speakers (a pair of PMC FB1i devices). I have disconnected and removed the centre (dialogue) speaker (a PMC TB2+MCi) and the rear surround speakers — a venerable (and dinky) pair of "Rock Solids" that had last been my surround pair in 1998. The previous long-term rear surround pair (for the last 11 years) were Sony SS-176Es that I originally bought, in some haste, and at a time of relative poverty (IBM salary, remember), to replace my even more venerable Celestion Ditton 66 studio monitors.3 I still have the KEF powered subwoofer wired in, but tend only to use it for film soundtracks, not "normal" stereo music.
Signal sources
CDs and MP3s: I have rather a lot of CDs, and they used to take up an unacceptable amount of space in the living room — well, unacceptable to Christa, certainly :-)
Being insane, my first solution was to record all my CDs on to minidiscs. This (literally) burned through three recorders over many months. And posed a fiddly, typesetting nightmare when it came to labelling the tiny little things. But having an obsessive sort of personality, this didn't really bother me. However, the only way to fit a lot of CDs on to a lesser number of minidiscs (for reasons of both expense and storage space) was to record them in the LP4 format that really didn't do the sound quality any good at all.
Not one to give up, I next tried ripping all the CDs to MP3 files, and storing all the CDs up in the loft. I then spent time shifting clusters of MP3 files around a variety of portable playback devices. None was entirely satisfactory. None was as high quality as the sound from my original CDs. Mind you, this was largely because I'd ripped all the damn' things at 128Kbps fixed bitrate, and only slowly became aware of various audible artefacts resulting from my unwise decision.
With retirement at the end of 2006 came the time I needed to fix this, once and for all. I started re-ripping my way through the CDs, this time using highest-quality and variable bitrate. But with retirement, sadly, also came Christa's final illness and (obviously) a complete end for many months to my motivation. I wasn't prepared to waste any time at all on hi-fi of any sort while my remaining time with her was so precious, and so obviously limited.
It wasn't until some eight months or so after Christa's death that a visit from Gill helped re-spark my interest in finishing the job. Now I have re-ripped the 33,000+ tracks from my CDs into variable bit rate MP3 format safely stored on several drives and network devices. To play these MP3s, I have several options: currently I use Foobar2000 running under Win7 on BlackBeast, feeding optical digital audio from my Creative X-Fi soundcard into the AudioLab pre-amp. I can also use the Netgear EVA9100 media streamer to grab the MP3s off my Buffalo NAS Terastation or a local USB-attached hard drive without involving BlackBeast. And I can play them upstairs via the Ubuntu desktop PC. (I've passed my Roku Soundbridge network player along to Brian, who can make good use of it for his Internet radio stations.)
I'm pleased to say (after further experiments with lossless FLAC encoding) I cannot hear any significant difference in quality between my re-ripped VBR MP3 files and the original CDs played on either of my Oppo machines. But I know which is the more pleasing "playing" experience. Hence my decision to keep some, at least, of my CDs in the CaseLogic folder storage system alongside the DVDs and Blu-rays. I'm therefore in the process of bringing my chosen subset back down from the loft to have them easily accessible once again. I'm also scanning all the CD artwork, but that's another story...
TV sound: I avoided any form of video recording until the advent of so-called VHS Hi-Fi in the early 1980s. The technical quality of the transmitted TV sound in those analogue days, although only mono, was actually quite good (easily on a par with FM radio, in fact). But most UK TVs sat in the corner of a room, had tiny speakers, and were quite literally pathetic in their audio stages. With a VHS Hi-Fi VCR (coupled with some quite clever dbx noise reduction) at least you could now route the audio out to your amplifier and bypass the TV sound system altogether, using the TV just as a display screen.
The arrival of NICAM stereo was a big step forward for TV audio quality, forcing manufacturers to pay more attention. When digital TV became the only game in town I fitted the 80cm dish we'd used for Christa's analogue German TV with a new quad LNB and re-aligned it to the digital Astra II cluster to deliver a more robust signal than the minidish ever did. However, I find I've now largely given up watching the rubbish broadcast on UK TV. The pictures are much better on the radio.
Radio: Until my third satellite receiver popped its clogs (in October 2011) I had US National Public Radio on tap, 24x7, from 13E up in the sky. Sadly, NPR can't afford to pay Sky's fee for being hosted on the Astra digital cluster, so I now have to content myself with the World Radio Network via my Humax Foxsat-HD PVR. And for terrestrial radio, I use a pair of Sony Freeview digital terrestrial set-top boxes. (I refuse to buy into the obsolescent DAB system being foisted on us in the UK.) Having the same model upstairs in the reading room system turned out to be the only way to finally solve the audio synchronisation "problem" when upstairs and downstairs systems are blasting away with the same radio programme. Last time I had upstairs and downstairs "in sync" was by the distinctly lower-tech approach of running a stereo audio analogue signal trip hazard up the stairs along a long pair of phono leads.
I am fully aware of, but have not yet tried, the experimental BBC radio high-resolution audio streaming. The 48 KHz PCM live digital radio seems fine to my ears.
Minidiscs: My Sony MDS-JE770 minidisc recorder may be obsolescent, but it does a grand job when archiving radio spoken word documentaries and plays. Furthermore, having used my custom-made audio/video switchbox for a decade before 'upgrading' to my first full-blown A/V amplifier4 in 1998, I find Sony MD recorders make very useful audio switchboxes.5
Any input signal (digital or analogue) is converted to analogue and sent to the output when the deck is in recording mode. So although the minidisc recorder in the living room system is used purely as intended, my second minidisc recorder (upstairs in my "reading room" sound system) accepts analogue audio from my HP MPC Ubuntu PC, digital audio from my NAD CD player, and digital audio from my Sony Freeview TV (used purely for digital radio). The minidisc recorder resamples and converts the digital bitstream into analogue audio for the tiny Class D amp that was previously used to drive my PW Belt electrostatic headphones.
Since I don't have any great need for headphone listening now, as the sole occupant of the house, I decided to let my "Rock Solids" speakers out to play once again.
Cassette tapes: I still have 250 or so high-quality classical music tapes and another 200 or so of all sorts of radio speech6 items. I was therefore delighted to unearth a dusty old Denon DRM-555 tape deck in a forgotten corner of a large "Comet" store and pleased to liberate it at a bargain price when they couldn't even find it on their computer system. It's only two-head, but has Dolby C Hx Pro, and (since I only use it for playback, not recording) it does just fine. Its playback quality sounds to me to be on a par with the three delightful Aiwa ADF-770 machines I had from 1983 onward.