I am looking for some advice on an upgrade to my entertainment system, but first I need to give you my specs and a little history:
The details of my current setup are:
Speakers: Paradigm Studio 20, just two of them. A few months back I was looking into getting a home theater but was eventually sold on the idea of buying two quality speakers instead of six satellite speakers that sounded like trash.
Receiver: Marantz SR6400. Even though I only invested in two speakers, I wanted the option of expanding to a 7.1 setup when I can afford it.
Cables: Transparent The Wave 200. I got these cables at $160 and thought that this was more than anyone should have to pay for a pair of speaker cables.
The Rest: It is all hooked up to my computer. I don't have a CD player, a DVD player, or even a TV in my entire house. My computer is home-built and carries an nForce2 chipset with the nVidia SoundStorm sound card. I am using a regular RCA cable to connect the computer's digital output to the CD digital input on the receiver.
With the exception of my computer, which I built myself, all of the equipment I got from a Paradigm dealer in Miami. When I first heard the speakers, I fell in love. My concern is that I have not been able to reproduce the audio quality I heard in the store. Now, the showroom had acoustic padding, a $10,000 amp, and assorted A/V gear from companies I have never heard of. I don't plan to ever get my studio 20s to the level that they can achieve with such expensive equipment, but I do want to get as close as I can at a reasonable cost.
I am not sure what the weakest link in the chain that powers the speakers is but here are my suspicions:
The Computer: I can't imagine that the people over at nVidia had the crazy audiophile in mind when they made the SoundStorm. Even though my music is exclusively 256Kbps MP3 and Apple Lossless, the signal going to my receiver might be less than perfect. The question here is of degree: by how does the signal negatively affect my sound quality?
The Listening Environment: My living room is small, but it's got stairs, an opening to the kitchen, and hard surfaces which make it less than ideal. In this case I will just have to live with it.
The Receiver: My Marantz SR6400 was only $800, pennies compared to what was running the Studio 20s at the store.
I have thought of getting a subwoofer, a nice super audio CD player, or a new sound card for my computer. Just imagine this is your system and tell me what you would do to improve it.
I have that NVidia soundcard on my computer, but I don't have it connected to my HT. I just don't think that Media Centers are on par with the HT I have. Computers are great for controlling a lot of things in the home but the home theater is different animal altogether. I suspect the computer is your weak link.
The showroom environment, if built ideally, is meant to sell the product and convince the buyer that they are in sonic nirvana. This is a standard a little harder to achieve in the home environment. They have different equipment and all kinds of enhancements.
You may want to invest in a decent CD and DVD player that can handle SACD and DVD Audio. You will notice a big improvement on sound and clarity. I don't care how sophisticated your computer maybe, it is not built for audio. Take the computer out of the equation and you will get better sound.
Guess I will start looking into some CD / SACD players. Any recomendations? I dont know by how much the quality of a CD player can affect playback much less what to look for when buying one. The only requirement that I have is that is black (to match the Marantz)
what is your budget? If you like the Marantz, they have an exceptionally good universal player, DV6400. Plays SACD and DVD audio, you will be pleased cheers
Thanks for the advice. The SR6400 seems to be right at my price point (the web shows market price somewhere between $400 and $600) I took a look at the higher end SR8400, but at $1300 its more than I want to spend. I asked the showroom where I got the Paradigms for their thoughts (and their price)on the SR6400.
As a general functionality question: Will I be able to take my MP3 music and burn it on a DVD as just MP3 files and use the SR6400 for playback? I am sure this will not work for the proprietary Apple Lossless format, but I have those songs as retail CDs.
