CH:
High school in '84? Now listen here Sonny ... (HA ! Just kiddin')
We never had kids so I am very jealous of musician offspring. Must be great. Always tried to get nieces and nephews into it until they started complaining about another Christmas music gift or CD from some old guy from the Uncle.
As much as I love music, I never had a decent stereo as any money always went to another guitar, amp, effect, synth, etc. Now you have itty bitty devices that sound amazing either streamed or downloaded. Can't imagine what we'll have in a few more years.
I had to look up Tidal and Roon. Interesting. Guess that's the future, no?
I am looking for a device wherein I can somehow transfer from sequencers and loopers to my phone or some other small device so I can play it back via bluetooth through a PA for backing tracks at open mics. Only way I can play fusion these days (sigh). I would need 1/4" dual > 1/8" phone cable to do so which I can't seem to find, but there has to be a box better than the phone for this so I can call up the tracks as patches? Maybe 1/4">RCA?
So I am curious. What does your system consist of?
You must remember Bill Chase, one of my trumpet playing heros?
It's been a long hard confusing journey building my system, since I really don't like computers or understand too much about them or care to know much about them. But to be able to have all your songs in one spot and be able to play any song instantly in atleast cd quality is too good to be true. I know old timers believe tubes and records sound the best, and they may very well, but the new digital stuff can sound really good now and ,again having every song at your fingertips is just great
while my kids were growing up, my wife and K each worked part time so that one of us was always home with the kids, so for years, I never had any money for a kick ass stereo, butnow that they are older and at least my wife makes good money, I have been able to build a pretty cool system over the past few years. The streaming stuff is forever changing and it took a while to understand how to incorporate the stereo into the stereo, but now I have a pretty good setup that sounds and works great.
I like to stick with the small stereo companies where you actually might get an answer from the owner/creator of the products if you email a question. my speakers are made by a guy named Sandy Gross who so founded Polk Audio, then Definitive Technology, and finally GoldenEar Technology which is what my speakers are.
My amps, preamp/dac/streamer are made by a guy named John Stronzer and a little company, I think in Michigan, called Bel Canto Design.
in the time I have built this system, unfortunately it has changed a lot so I ended up upgrading pieces as I understood streaming better and realized how much I love this stuff.
I started out using the computer to run everything, which I hated, and ended up taking the computer out of computer audio, kind of anyway. That's what Roon does. I bought a Roon Nucleus, which basically is a linux operating system to just run the Roon program and houses a hard drive with all my music. I run it from my tablet.
I really don't need to have Tidal, because my own library is so huge, but for $20 a month I get virtually evry song available and theynare always adding more. Through the Roon program, if you play an album, it will show you similar artists, so you can find music that you never new about. stuff like that so it's pretty cool. like you mentioned Brand X. I havent listened to them yet, but Tidal has a whole bunch of there albums. Tidal also has many albums in MQA which is way of encoding that is supposed to sound closer to the way the original recordiing then anything else. you can look that up for a better explanation than mine
So , I sit on my couch, dead center in the sweet spot and call up any song from my tablet, as well as , I have added Alexa controlled lighting and ceiling fans also controlled either by voice or on my tablet.
So here's my system:
GoldenEar Technology Triton Reference speakers
Bel Canto Ref500 mono block amps. these are little digital amps that stay on 24/7 and draw very little power but sound amazing and put out some power
Bel Canto E1x DAC/preamp/streamer
Audioquest Niagra 1200 power conditioner. my interconnects and power cords are also by audioquest
Nordost purple flair speaker wire
Roon nucleus. also have a backup hard drive
most of the stuff, for me is pretty crazy expensive, but in the scheme of high end audio, it is a poor mans rich guy system lol. for example, this is nuts, but my power cords are $500. and there are many,many more expensive power cords. mine are actually some of. the cheaper decent ones. And yes, I heard a difference when I added them. not huge, but a difference. and I was a non believer before that.
outside of stereo, and beer, I spend basically no money on anything else for myself. almost never buy a coffee out or a sandwich out... all of my money has always gone to family needs and remodeling my house, which I do myself. I am a contractor, but now I almost solely just do plaster. I'm getting older, slower and tired so decided it was time to enjoy music again. plus, it goes good with beer
She once bought me a t-shirt that had a Gabriel head on it in his Supper's Ready outfit with the caption, "A Flower?"