Newbie Help

[scangle]

I am upgrading some very old stereo equipment and am interested in some high end gear. I have a $5,000 budget and am in need of speakers, integrated amp, cd player, and a rack for the gear. I listen to mostly rock music (Allman Brothers, Little Feat, Beatles, etc..). The room size is approx. 24x14 with carpeting, sofa and chair, a table and two lamps. I have looked and researched so much gear that it has become confusing. What I have liked so far is a Rotel RA-1570 or RA-1520 or Teac AI-2000 or AI-3000 amp and Bower & Wilikins 683 speakers or Golden Ear Triton Three speakers. Any help/suggestions are welcome. Thanks!

 

[Swerd]

I am upgrading some very old stereo equipment and am interested in some high end gear. I have a $5,000 budget and am in need of speakers, integrated amp, cd player, and a rack for the gear. I listen to mostly rock music (Allman Brothers, Little Feat, Beatles, etc..). The room size is approx. 24x14 with carpeting, sofa and chair, a table and two lamps. I have looked and researched so much gear that it has become confusing. What I have liked so far is a Rotel RA-1570 or RA-1520 or Teac AI-2000 or AI-3000 amp and Bower & Wilikins 683 speakers or Golden Ear Triton Three speakers. Any help/suggestions are welcome. Thanks!

Hi and welcome to Audioholics. With a budget like yours and a decent sized room you have a lot of good choices available. Do you intend to stay with 2-channel, or do you want to have a 5-channel system?

Do you have a record player, or plan to use one? If so, you might want an amp or receiver that has a built-in phono preamp. However, it is possible to get an external phono preamp at a reasonable price, under $100.

The tower speakers you mentioned, roughly in the price range of $2,000 per pair, have a lot of good competition. Speakers are where the "rubber hits the road" and money spent on good speakers will provide the best sounding results. Put your major shopping effort into choosing speakers, and worry less about the all the confusing features of the amps and receivers.

I'm familiar with the B&W 683s, they're overrated in my opinion, you can do much better. But I'm not familiar with the Golden Ears.

The best speakers in that price range are sold by Internet Direct speaker makers. They are in my opinion much better values than anything sold through standard dealerships. You won't see these in stores, but they are in my opinion among the best available:

Salk SongTower

Philharmonic Audio Slim Jr.

Ascend Acoustics Sierra Tower

If you buy an amp or receiver with enough power to drive those speakers, roughly 100 to 150 watts/channel, you'll be in very good shape. Those receivers you mentioned are probably alright, but so are many others. I'd stick with brands such as Denon, Yamaha, Marantz, or Harmon Kardon. They're known for good reliability, and they compete with each other over price. As a guess, you heard those B&W speakers and the Rotel receivers at the same dealer. B&W owns Rotel, and they try to sell both to customers.

If you want something to play CDs, don't waste money on a high priced CD player. Instead, get an inexpensive DVD player (they all play CDs), and make a digital connection to a receiver with a built-in DAC. The DACs (digital-to-analog converters) generally do a better job than the cheaper DACs in the DVD players. However, the so-called high-end CD players (there may be few of any other kinds of CD players left on the marker) aren't worth their cost.

 

[Cos]

I have only heard the Salks, which sounded really good, but I know the other two choices have gotten really good reviews.

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I do have experience with Golden Ear, My bedroom is Golden Ear (2xTriton 7 2xAon 3 2xAon 2), My new HT in process (Hope buyer of my Paradigm's actually shows up this time) is GE as well, final build looks to be Pair of Triton Ones, Pair of 7 Surrounds and Aon 3s for the rear.

Here is my suggestion. I would demo both the Triton 7s and the Triton 3s. Based on room setup you might want to consider the Triton 7s with a separate sub vs. the Triton 3s. The 7s do a really good job of filling up a room and with the money you save you could by a decent sub to match.

 

[ImcLoud]

I am upgrading some very old stereo equipment and am interested in some high end gear. I have a $5,000 budget and am in need of speakers, integrated amp, cd player, and a rack for the gear. I listen to mostly rock music (Allman Brothers, Little Feat, Beatles, etc..). The room size is approx. 24x14 with carpeting, sofa and chair, a table and two lamps. I have looked and researched so much gear that it has become confusing. What I have liked so far is a Rotel RA-1570 or RA-1520 or Teac AI-2000 or AI-3000 amp and Bower & Wilikins 683 speakers or Golden Ear Triton Three speakers. Any help/suggestions are welcome. Thanks!

Welcome to the forum...

$5000 is a great budget for a music only system, these are my absolute favorite posts, I don't know how I missed it until now...

First a stand- thats the easy part, lol Amazon.com - VTI BL304 BL Series 4-Shelf Audio Rack - Audio Video Component Shelves I like these vti's they are very high end looking with the spikes between each shelf... And the cost doesn't reflect it like a lot of stuff in this hobby...

Now speakers... This is the hard part.... You really need to listen to, I can tell you what I would buy, but I am cheap and look for the best bang for my buck all the time, kind of a sickness...
I would go with a 2.2 system, I would start with a pair of subs. SVS SB-2000 - 500 Watt DSP Controlled, 12" Compact Sealed Subwoofer
and I would go with bookshelf speakers, since towers are only made for going lower, and bookshelfs tend to be more refined, less resonance, easier to place and to me just sound better than towers when coupled with a subwoofer...
Sierra-2 RAAL Ribbon Tweeter Bamboo Cabinet Loudspeaker Sierra 2's in piano black to match the subs, would look really good...
Now that leaves you around $1700 for everything else...

Amps I like these, and for $600 a pair of 200w mono blocks is hard to find, I have a set and will put them against any other amp on the market at any price, show me the difference that I can hear... OUTLAW MODEL 2200 MONO AMP (PAIR) **DEMO** at Music Direct
cd player MARANTZ CD5004 CD PLAYER **DEMO** at Music Direct
preamp Amazon.com: Parasound - Classic 2100 Stereo Preamp: Electronics you can not go wrong with this preamp, very nice unit, ask me how I know, lol...

That leaves you almost $200 for cables... I would get these
New Choseal LB-5109 8.2ft audio cable OCC Speaker Cable 2.5M OD19 & Banana plug
and 3 sets of these one to go to the amp from the preamp, one to go to your subs and one to go to the cd player Q 845 Original Choseal 1 5M HiFi Auido RCA Cable Good for Amp Preamplifier | eBay

that still leaves you money for some nice bookshelf stands... Apollo Olympus 5 Speaker Stands Piano Black 20" Pair | eBay there are tons of them out there, you have to pick which you like...

So to recap with out the links
Ascend sierra 2 bookshelfs - I have heard these and will buy them soon enough for my self, but you can not say a bad thing about them, and to get anything that sounds close, you are going to spend A LOT more money...

SVS SB2000, sealed subs with the above speakers will give you all the room filling rock music you can handle, you do the math with your main amps no longer needing to reproduce the power robbing lows, you will have the 200w to power your mains, plenty of dynamic headroom.... These subs sound awesome, again, you will need to spend much more to get the same sound elsewhere...

Marantz cd player, I like these, they are easy to use, silent, well made, ect everything you can want from a cd player.. The parasound zcd is nice too, but much smaller, if you don't mind that look into it...

Preamp- the parasound is awesome, in my opinion one of the best values in our hobby... $650 for something this nice is hard to find...

Amps, again, VALUE VALUE VALUE, 200watt mono blocks {no cross talk} for $600!!! I own these, they rock and don't break, Outlaw audio is awesome, these are nice amps, kind of heavy, but very very nice....


Now that is what I would do, I actually own that system to some extent, lol...
But there are other options...

Towers- I like towers, but I like room filling lows, to back up my highs, especially with rock music.. I think if you compare even a $5000 pair of towers with a nice set of bookshelfs and the subs I linked, you will choose the sub/book setup... I am addicted to them...

Recievers and integrated vs pre/and mono blocks... I mean, why not go with pre and mono blocks, its going to cost less and give you more, you can add a turntable, Ipod dock, sonus, dac, avr, ect ect in the future if you like, i-amps are tough to add on to... I am all for short signal paths, but cd-pre-amp is very nice... plus you get a remote control, tone control, bass management, ect...

If you still want towers and an I amp with no subs...
look into Ascend sierra towers $3000 and the outlaw rr2150 receiver... they are both a great value...

as far as cables, you can buy what ever you want, I have some of the choseal stuff and they are really impressive for the price.. Not that any cable is giong to sound better than another, but they sure as heck look cool...

Good luck, there are so many options and ways to go