Members Products of the Decade

[Ajax]

Great thread, always interested in opinions of others on gear, and I encourage other members to participate.

 

Value Digital = Auralic Mini at a cost of about US$350.

 

I'm not sure why Auralic discontinued the Mini because it delivers great sound with excellent flexibility at a ridiculously low price. If you can find a unit second hand I highly recommend purchasing one. I have three and use them in several different configurations including: 

 

1. individual streamer utilising the DAC inside a Devialet 220 in my Living Room

2. individual streamer feeding a Benchmark DAC 2 into Nord Hypex NC500 Digital power amp in my Home Office

3. Standalone streamer/DAC with a booster SB linear power supply into a Marantz PM 5005 Integrated AMP at my Beach house

 

I have installed a 500G SSD hard drive in each machine and have content provided by own "best off" albums as local files as well as Spotify Connect and Tidal while using the excellent free Lighting DS software. The unit is very small and light (size of the gen 3 Apple TV) and therefore easy to travel with .... just add powered monitors or simply plug it into the RCA inputs of an integrated amp or area amp. Brilliant!

 

see Chris's review here 

 

 

Value Analogue - Rega Planar 3 turntable with Elys cartridge

 

High End Value = Devialet 220, as described above by SJK this is a wonderful piece of electronics that provides incredible sound and flexibility in a very WAG friendly package. I bought it as an Ensemble with OTHM G1 speakers and added 2 x SVS SB 2000 subs, which I configure with the internal DSP crossover.

 

By chance I have a French friend coming over next week (currently dating my wife's bestie) who is a lighting guru and travelled with Pink Floyd for 4 years and also did several Rolling Stones concerts. He is now responsible for the lightning of the Sydney Harbour Bridge on NYE. During his time lighting concerts he also learnt a lot about acoustics and is going to help me EQ my room as I have just completed a renovation. Should be great fun.

 

High End Analogue = Linn LP12 turntable

 

If I was allowed another product I would add the Benchmark DAC / ABH2 power amp combination but as we are only allowed one product per category I won't.

 

All the best,

 

Ajax

 

[Ajax]

3 hours ago, Richard Dale said:

I was trying to think of anything I’ve got that would qualify as a product of the decade and you’ve just reminded me. I would nominate the LS50 wireless speakers. Value for money is off the scale as they are a complete system for not much more than the passive LS50. Combine them with subwoofers in a well treated room like I have, and they are the basis of a really quite high end full range sounding system.

 

Hi Richard,

 

I helped my nephew set up his system for his smallish townhouse and after a lot of research we selected the passive LS50s driven by a NuPrime IDA-8, that has its own internal DAC. Sounds great and the LS50 are certainly one of the best book shelf speakers I have heard. Combine that with a well implemented DAC, digital amplification and adding a pair of SUBs and it is easy to see why the wireless version it is such a revered product. I don't know what would compare with it $ vs sound quality for a small listening area except maybe a secondhand Benchmark DAC 2 into a pair of active speakers such as the ADAM A7xs.