Amplifier and speakers for the Man-cave

[WTFH]

A real man cave looks like this...

Seen those banks before, given that most of them are not wired up (empty cabs) and only two speakers are tonally good enough to be miked up, it's not that impressive.


Jim made great cabs and heads, although I would prefer a Soldano head. You can't beat the glow of valves.

[yasockie]

After long days/hours of research and actually listening, I settled for Yamaha R-301 amplifier + a pair of Elac FS77.
Yamaha amp gives a nice, neutral sound and enough oomph per channel to drive the ELACs
ELAC are manufactured in Germany and so far I can not fault them - the sound is crystal clear, with good resolution, probably very slightly too much bass for my liking (easily fixed in equaliser).
All in all very happy with my setup as I mostly listen to music, watch movies and play games, but I don't particularly care for 5.1 or 7.1, just good stereo.

[LondonManc]

Another +1 for the SONOS system here.

[Platypus]

Look on eBay, I'm selling some Rogers LS5 at the moment and also some Linn Sara's although the Sara's will likely be too much for the NAD to bear. But the Rogers are beautiful, classic, and will work very well with a NAD (3020 I assume?).

I'll sell off eBay if you're interested

[Scruff]

A real man cave looks like this...

A Whole Lotta' Love!

[Scruff]

Look on eBay, I'm selling some Rogers LS5 at the moment and also some Linn Sara's although the Sara's will likely be too much for the NAD to bear. But the Rogers are beautiful, classic, and will work very well with a NAD (3020 I assume?).

I'll sell off eBay if you're interested

Nice bins. I regret selling my Kef Concerto. Brought them all the way from Cape Town and sold them within 6 months of arriving since I needed the space at the time... Bloody fool I was.

[Scrag Meister]

I have a simple Logitech set of PC Speakers, probably shows I am no sound connoisseur. Z906 I think they are, do a great job for gaming and good atmosphere for movies, have Z5500 in the lounge.

Logitech Z906

[MrWebDev]

I'd check out those What Hi-Fi links posted earlier, always a good place to start. If you've got a Richer Sounds shop nearby, try going in there and talking to the staff, I've always found them pretty knowledgeable too.

The guys with Sonos speakers; what are you playing through them? Spotify, Apple Music your own collection, etc etc?

[LondonManc]

I'd check out those What Hi-Fi links posted earlier, always a good place to start. If you've got a Richer Sounds shop nearby, try going in there and talking to the staff, I've always found them pretty knowledgeable too.

The guys with Sonos speakers; what are you playing through them? Spotify, Apple Music your own collection, etc etc?

Spotify, last.fm and my own music. Streaming the music from a NAS through whatever device (phone/ipad/pc) I'm controlling the Sonos system with.

[ThomserveBAS]

Since moving to our new house, I'm slowly building the automated/tech home I've always wanted. Part of this is my Sonos setup - I currently have 2 Play 1's and have just treated myself to a Sonos Connect:Amp which will sit in my comms cabinet and connect to in-ceiling speakers in the kitchen. As the Sky box is also in the cabinet, I can feed the analog out from the Sky box into the Connect:Amp and that will in turn feed the audio from Sky to any of the Sonos devices in the house.

Sonos is an incredible bit of kit, reassuringly expensive but so easy to use and integrates with most (see below) music services effortlessly.

The biggest issue I see with Sonos at the moment is the lack of integration with Apple - they are missing a trick by not supporting AirPlay or Apple Music - whilst both a rumored to be available by the end of the year, they should be available now IMO.

I don't massively miss AirPlay integration (and if it bothered me that much, I could plug an AirPort Express into the Connect:Amp and feed audio in that way) and I have a Spotify subscription as well as Apple Music, but it just feels wrong to have such a premium product missing integration with Apple.