A kick-ass hi-fi system for €1000

oh hey john this video is  brought to us by headphones.com   i'll be back later in the video to  tell you more about it but if you   can't wait that long click the link in the  description box below okay see you later how do we set up an entry-level beginner level  hi-fi system now i've tackled this in a video   a couple of weeks ago but the twist with that  video was that i used components from the 90s   so i used mission loudspeakers a  rotel amp and a marantz cd player   and i thought it would be good to do a follow-up  video using components that are available today   so like modern retail components if you like  so not vintage gear now as i've proved before   anybody can put together a video suggesting  components you know that some to i don't know   roughly a thousand euros or a thousand dollars and  say this is a good hi-fi system and it's one thing   to theorize but it's another thing completely to  actually do it so to get those components put them   together and to take a listen which is what we're  going to do in this video now of course this isn't   the only way to build an entry level hi-fi system  in 2021 but this is the way that i've done it so we start with the loudspeakers now because in  my previous video in my 90s vintage entry-level   hi-fi setup video i had mission loudspeakers i  thought it would be really interesting to see   what mission are offering at the entry level today  so i bought a pair of lx2 mark ii and you can see   they look a little bit similar in sort of design  topology to the 760i that i had in the previous   video so you notice how the mid bass driver this  thing here is above the tweeter the ports though   are not on the front they're on the back now  and we have magnetic grilles instead of clip-ons   and i think that's much nicer just be able  to take them on and off really really easily   now if you're new to all of this hi-fi business  you might be wondering why these patterns here   and here around the drivers and they're  implemented to scatter any reflections that   might otherwise come off a more uniform surface  another nerd note is that mission since i think   the 90s have adopted computer modelling to develop  their loudspeakers so the bracing inside of here   was computer modeled so they're not just hitting  and hoping they've actually you know analyzed   the internals of the speaker with a computer  and worked out where to put the bracing and   some of the um the stuffing is that the right word  stuffing no that's not the right word but whatever   and computer modelling was also used apparently  for the crossover which for those people that   know about these kinds of things is fourth order  link with riley now in terms of sound this is a   more lean in exciting speaker than the 760i which  i know sounds kind of a little bit unbelievable   however it does trade in a little bit of the  760i speed for a bit more refinement so this   sounds like a more accomplished loudspeaker it has  a slightly richer mid bass and there's just more   weight in the bottom end furthermore this  one plays louder so with the 760i with the   vintage 90s loudspeaker it starts to sound a  little bit strained as you crank the volume   not so with this model and this is definitely  a better loudspeaker than that 760i   i know some people sort of cling to the idea that  vintage sounds best as if speaker designers are   going backwards since the the 70s and 80s which is  absolutely not true in this particular case anyway   because yeah this speaker sounds much much better  to me than the 760 i however i would say that   what ties the sort of vintage mission  with this modern day mission together   is mid-range transparency these are both very  mid-range focus speakers this one probably even   more so than the older model so we can definitely  see how this new mission shares some of the dna of   the the mission from 30 years ago you know  with the driver arrangement but this one   it's a bit heavier than the 760i it feels  well yeah when a speaker's heavier you feel   like you're getting more for your money don't  you now in terms of specs this is 87 db it's   eight ohm nominal not six so that means it should  present a very easy load to most amplifiers   however the tweeter here it can get a bit  lively at times so we do not want an amplifier   that plays to that liveliness we want to bring  it in a little bit we want to control it so now there are no amplifiers inside the mission  loudspeakers so we need an outboard amplifier   like this one this is an integrated from nad and  this think of this is like the modern version-ish   of the classic 3020 from back in the  day now the main advantage of having   an integrated in 2021 and i  guess for the last decade or so   is we get a remote control which we didn't  have with the vintage rotel in my last video   what we do have is a nice low profile amp like the  rotel defeatable tone controls here balance volume   the source selection uh illuminated press switches  and this amp just like the rotel has a built   in mm phono stage on the back only one set of  binding posts for me i don't care about having   two sets of binding posts i never did when i  started out and i don't now why did i choose   this amp well firstly is because i already had it  around the house but also this does prove to be a   very good fit for the missions also the reason  i bought this in the first place was because   it's very good at keeping a lid or keeping good  control of more ebullient tweeters which we tend   to find crop up more often at the entry level  so this is 40 watts per channel sounds like a   lot more it's class a b i'm not against class d  but i think class a b and it's slightly warmer   sound this is a warmish kind of amp a little bit  that works well with the mission loudspeakers   liveliness in the top end but perhaps my favorite  quality of this amplifier is that it sounds very   robust as germans would say very robust it's  very strong with dynamics it has lots of punch   lots especially for the price point i mean i i  love this amp i think it's absolutely fantastic   and even though i'm going to give the missions  away on my patreon this one is staying with me   the mission loudspeakers sell for 277 euros per  pair my chosen amplifier today 3.99 generally   speaking i find that amplification at the entry  level now costs more than the loudspeakers hey welcome to the part of today's video where  we talk about the sponsor headphones.com what   you might not know about headphones.com is that  they're the world's largest online headphone   retailer they sell products from a broad range of  manufacturers they've got you covered with open   back headphones closed back headphones in-ear  monitors desktop amps and decks portable lamps   and decks portable music players and so much  more and best of all they offer 365-day returns   amazing right you have a whole year to  make sure you're happy with your purchase   for more information click the link in the  description box below now back to the video we're not in the 90s anymore so  we're not going to use a cd player   today we're going to use a network streamer  which i actually introduced in my previous video   this fisher-price looking thing is the aloe boss  2 player basically inside there's a raspberry pi 4   and then a low's own dac board which is built  with audiophile sensitivities those sensitivities   fall beyond the scope of this video so if  you want to know more about those i'll put   a link in the description box below this  comes with a micro sd card fully loaded   with mood os or is it moody it's m double o d e i  don't know how you say that mood or moody whatever   i'm not a big fan of moody's sort of default web  interface player it's not quite as accomplished   as volumio but i think most beginners will be  excited by the fact that spotify is up and running   pretty much out of the box you have to click one  switch as is squeeze light so you can use this   as a virtual squeeze box for those of you that  remember logitech and slim devices squeeze boxes   so this does many things if you want  to use roon you can but you have to   add it via secure shell and command line now  that sounds a bit daunting it's really nice   just copy and pasting three commands again for  those instructions i'll put a link guess where   in the description box below just like a cd  player we have to connect this to our amplifier   here we use an analog interconnect i'm using  the evergreen from audioquest in my last video   i said that americans sometimes call these analog  interconnects cinch cables that's not true it's   actually europeans that call them cinch cables  especially germans anyway to beat the sound to   beat not like it's competition but to best the  sound of this rather odd looking player you would   have to add something like the audioquest  cobalt or the thx onyx to a raspberry pi 4.   and you would probably get more resolution from a  source device if you did that but those two setups   so the audioquest dac with the pi or the thx  stack with the pi wouldn't be quite as dark   as the elo boss 2 player here now you might  think dark is a bad thing but it's actually not   because it what it does is it it takes the  possibility of hearing that slightly sort of   glary lower treble it puts it in a box  and it puts it at the bottom of the ocean   so this never never never never sounds glary at  all we get none of that sort of digital feeling   and that's why i really like the sound of this  it's just such a pity it looks so cheap and nasty   i hate to say it because a lot of people will be  put off by that but this is a terrific terrific   sounding raspberry pi based network streamer and  it's a great fit for our system today because   this thing's a little bit warm this thing's a  little bit dark and together these two devices   stop the mission tweeter from running away with  itself from being too insistent or too there   the other advantage that the low streamer  has over dongle dax added to raspberry pi   4s is that we get a remote control it does do  volume but i use the volume on the amp here   but what we also get is a little mini display  which tells us ip address and things like that   which is very useful when you're trying to control  this device from a web browser but we also get if   we click the right button more advanced settings  including filter settings so this is like the   twinkie geeky area of this network streamer now  the filter settings make much more of a pronounced   difference to the sound than i really expected  a bit like with the the denifripps aries 2 dac   so we can tweak the sort of the the top  end extension to taste because we have   fast roll-off slow roll-off i prefer the slow  but some people might prefer the fast there are   a couple of other options here which i'm not going  to go into but we have customization very slight   but we don't get that with a dragonfly or with  a thx dac and if we consider this like a hi-fi   meal we can use the filter settings and the other  settings on here to salt our meal to taste to our   own particular preferences because everybody  has their own yeah their own taste in things so so how does our 21st century entry-level hifi  system compare to the sudo vintage 90 sci-fi   system well this one the modern one it images  better that means it puts players on a virtual   sound stage more more obviously i mean it's not  super crisp or anything like that but it's still   more cleanly drawn than within vintage gear but  the new system is more impactful with drum hits   it has more weight and heft moving into  the room it actually drives the room better   the sound stage is bigger both in width and in  height it sounds like a much bigger loudspeaker   system but it's not as fast it's not as nimble  so i think the mission lx 2 mark ii i won't   say they're more sluggish it's just that they  because they have more weight in the bottom end   i guess that sort of illusion of  speed is compromised a little bit   and because we have a streaming front end not a  cd player it's more functionally ambidextrous now   this system behind me including the speaker  stands and the cables comes in at roughly a   thousand euros maybe a little bit more and  that's the same price as a pair of kef lsx   i did do the comparison albeit briefly this  is a much bigger sounding system i think it   would play much bigger in larger rooms the kef  sounds smaller more more constrained although it   does image a lot better i think because of the  coaxial driver but a separate system like this   so basically separate loudspeakers separate amp  separate streaming dac all connected with cables   is more physically intrusive than a  streaming active speaker like the lsx   however it's much easier to connect a turntable  to the system because remember the nad amplifier   has a built-in phono stage so if you're into  vinyl yeah i think separates are the way to go   generally speaking but there's no doubt about  it this is the kick-ass sounding hi-fi system   for relatively little money and i love discovering  things like this there's much more joy to be had   in finding terrific sound quality at lower price  points and i do love covering it i really do but   i also love covering more expensive stuff and  it is such a shame that in the comment section   those more expensive pieces are met with you know  occasional bouts of hostility because we can ask   ourselves is this all you need and we've been here  before haven't we link up here for most people the   answer will be yes they'll buy something like this  they'll live with it and that is all they need for   other people this kind of system will serve as  a catalyst for them going deeper and further   into the audiophile world and that wait for  it that might include more expensive gear   so i think it's best to think of this separate  system a bit like that sort of young and fruity   and very affordable supermarket wine that you  kind of get frustrated by when it's discontinued   or the stock runs out because just like that  bargain supermarket wine this this separate   system out of roughly a thousand euros this  is where diminishing marginal returns kick in   so i hope this video inspires you to go  and do some work of your own because i   can't do it for you i hope it inspires you  to go out and build your first hi-fi system   it doesn't have to be these particular items this  is just a system that i compiled which i think is   very very good for the money so if you like  this video please hit the like button down   below if you like my attitude towards high-end  audio in that sometimes it's expensive gear   but sometimes it's not sometimes it's super  affordable like this if you like that then   please subscribe to this channel and as  always thank you ever so much for watching some of you find people are still asking what this  is and why i have it on the top of some of my gear   the answer lies in the description box below

Channel: Darko Audio

Views: 253,588

Keywords: Audio, streaming, High-End Audio, Audiophile, head-fi, porta-fi, sound quality, Darko, reviews, show reports, berlin, techno

Id: QJBIyHujy2k

Length: 20min 3sec (1203 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 08 2021