2. misc-audio
  3. 148456-123666

Moderately priced audio

So I have been a audiophile for 40 years and in that time I have seen and owned a huge amount of equipment. Lately I have been reading Sterephile magazine and attended the last 2 years of Axpona. My question is what about the people that love the craft and get tremendous joy out of their audio systems that are in the $2-5K price range. Are they to be ignored? I know this hobby holds a lot of enthusiasm by people that have great sounding systems of new and vintage gear that they are proud of and enjoy listening to. While I appreciate the sound and the technology of the systems that cost more than a house I think there is a slice of enthusiast that are silent. Back in the 70s I worked at a stereo store that your average person came in and spent $600-$1000 and got a good sounding system. And we sold a lot of them. Seems a lot less interest today. Could it be the price of what you see in magazines and shows? I am curious to see if you people are out there that love the music and get great joy out of listening to your moderately priced audio equipment. Feel free to share what you have. I know you are out there. 
schmitty1
uberwaltz's avatar
uberwaltz
13,381 posts
 
But back to our regular programming....
I decided to put my money where my mouth was and ordered a pair of the AudioEngine 2+ speakers for my computer room, at that price well worth a risk.

This will be fed from Win10 pc, will play ripped cds, real cds (using JRiver) and stream from Qobuz all over USB to the speaker direct.

Should be a tidy little system for not very many bucks at all.

I decided I did not need to add the turntable as we already have 4 tables in the house......
uberwaltz's avatar
uberwaltz
13,381 posts
 
Hogwash!
NOBODY TOLD you to "join in" at all, you need to learn to read!

It was merely a suggestion that you should consider it instead of dissing it and its MANY users so disparagingly out of hand.

If you cannot take some heat yourself maybe you should count to 200 before you post.

Let go with both barrels? nope what you did was post a truly disgracefull diatribe which you should be thoroughly ashamed of.( very probable as you have now deleted all your posts on the subject here)

Enough said on the subject but do NOT try to place blame elsewhere , you knew full well what type of reply your post would garner.

Now you have a great day dearie....
lalitk's avatar
lalitk
5,419 posts
 
For my home (office), pair of SONOS Play 3’s and a Sub, all under $1300. The sound is freakishly good on all genre of music. Unlimited streaming via Tidal/Qobuz. 
whoopycat
168 posts
 
In my bedroom system I use a $140 Chinese tube amp fed by a Sony blu-ray player from Target with my Zu DefHead speakers.  Sounds just as good as my living room system.  I tried much more expensive amps/DACs in that room and realized it didn't really sound any better.  
melvinjames
416 posts
 
I put this together for my work space for under $400:

$100 - Dayton Audio DTA-120
$120 - Pioneer SP-BS22-LR
$100 - Apple TV2
$  50 - Monoprice cables

The old Apple TV2 has since been replaced with a Bluesound Node 2 ($500) bringing the price up to just below $800. This simple system sounds far better than expected and I can't tell you how many nice comments/compliments I've gotten on the sound over the past few years. 

More to discover