Before the mp3 revolution we had tangible CD's that everyone purchased but it's becoming more and more obsolete with services such as itunes, Rhapsody, and Napster and a lot of people like myself download the better quality Flac releases.

With that out of the way the question comes into play, What's the best way to play music now?

Before when I bought CD's I had a nice home shelf stereo with a reciever, amp, CD player, and a cassette player with a 5.1 speaker set-up, with crappy headphones, lol.

Times have changed, now most of my listening is on my PC which can't be the best option. We all know or at least most of us know that the PC is a very noisy enviornment and therefore we get unwanted noise in our playback, even with the better soundcards this happens.

I also have an mp3 player that I don't think I can live without, Music on the go or in the car is essential and it limits the use of 100-200 cd's in my car which is a valuable option for on the go or in the car but not good enough for home use.

I'm currently looking into other options for my home audio wants. Only music, Not for video use. I'm not looking to replace my home stereo, but possibly adding to it? Maybe even a seperate devise.

Mainly headphones will be used as opposed to speakers.

Is ther like a media center HDD that plays just music that I can hook up to my home reciever?

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i usually listen to music on the pc or my ipod, but my xbox is still kicking with xbmc and is my main media player. it's hooked up to my stereo setup. that's always a cheap option.

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Like most things you can either do it cheap or you can do it right, you can get a small form factor pc that has totally passive cooling (no fans for those wearing helmets) and a small linux/bsd based distro designed around media (would not be hard at all with a lil research and tweaking, even a major one like base debian could rock it easy) with an SSD hard drive, you can even go for a cheaper end ssd since once you fill it up with music you wont be going write crazy on the disk and killing it's read/write cycles, then the only expensive piece you put on it is the best audio card(s) you can find depending how you want to output it -- if i was crazy audiophile style, this is how I would do it, it would give giant flexability and could be attached to anything that accepts audio (can then tailor it to the system you're hooking up to with either digital audio cables or matching ones for best sound quality, or spend the extra bucks for something 'port crazy' so that you'll be able to plug it into absolutely anything without sound distorting conversion cables).

As far as adding on to your system, not sure besides a small machine like that built around media playback, I believe there are things that will wirelessly send audio signal to a lil box from a pc that'll hook directly into your reciever to stream audio that way (some that you can even accept your remote inputs from to effect song changes, etc etc) but I can't for the life of me remember what the name of them are, I keep thinking slingbox but I think that's the tv-type version of it.

There are options out there but i'm more of a general purpose geek then an audiophile ;p

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Smash both your hands on your big fat belly.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Bit_Confused
Smash both your hands on your big fat belly.

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HAHA

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quote:

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Originally posted by punzada
Like most things you can either do it cheap or you can do it right, you can get a small form factor pc that has totally passive cooling (no fans for those wearing helmets) and a small linux/bsd based distro designed around media (would not be hard at all with a lil research and tweaking, even a major one like base debian could rock it easy) with an SSD hard drive, you can even go for a cheaper end ssd since once you fill it up with music you wont be going write crazy on the disk and killing it's read/write cycles, then the only expensive piece you put on it is the best audio card(s) you can find depending how you want to output it -- if i was crazy audiophile style, this is how I would do it, it would give giant flexability and could be attached to anything that accepts audio (can then tailor it to the system you're hooking up to with either digital audio cables or matching ones for best sound quality, or spend the extra bucks for something 'port crazy' so that you'll be able to plug it into absolutely anything without sound distorting conversion cables).

As far as adding on to your system, not sure besides a small machine like that built around media playback, I believe there are things that will wirelessly send audio signal to a lil box from a pc that'll hook directly into your reciever to stream audio that way (some that you can even accept your remote inputs from to effect song changes, etc etc) but I can't for the life of me remember what the name of them are, I keep thinking slingbox but I think that's the tv-type version of it.

There are options out there but i'm more of a general purpose geek then an audiophile ;p

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quote:

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Originally posted by Bit_Confused
Smash both your hands on your big fat belly.

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quote:

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Originally posted by The CandyMan
Just make sure Bit_Confused Mum's head is out of the way.

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The best way is proberly a PC. I still listen to alot of music on my stereo though.


BTW... Merry christmas to everyone.

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If I buy anything, it's on vinyl.. bigger artwork, often cheaper, coloured/picture discs. It's just a better package to own.

If I download, it's just in plain old MP3. Wouldn't pay for em tho. iTunes library on lounge PC hooked up to big screen and hifi separates takes care of playback.

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quote:

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Originally posted by pHo
If I buy anything, it's on vinyl.. bigger artwork, often cheaper, coloured/picture discs. It's just a better package to own.

If I download, it's just in plain old MP3. Wouldn't pay for em tho. iTunes library on lounge PC hooked up to big screen and hifi separates takes care of playback.

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The best way is on vinyl on a decent 70's system(newer systems are too "clean") My preference would be a Pioneer deck,(Must have a sure cartridge) Leak amp and Cambridge speakers .You can still pick all this stuff up at bootsales.
Having said that I mainly listen to the cd player in the car (120 mile round trip to go to work).
I is mainly listening to the Eagles, Neil Young and Heaven and Hell (AKA Sabbath) at the Mo.Rust still rocks!!.
I have gotta agree about flac as well gotta be only a matter of time.

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quote:

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Originally posted by gezzer
The best way is on vinyl on a decent 70's system(newer systems are too "clean") My preference would be a Pioneer deck,(Must have a sure cartridge) Leak amp and Cambridge speakers .You can still pick all this stuff up at bootsales.
Having said that I mainly listen to the cd player in the car (120 mile round trip to go to work).
I is mainly listening to the Eagles, Neil Young and Heaven and Hell (AKA Sabbath) at the Mo.Rust still rocks!!.
I have gotta agree about flac as well gotta be only a matter of time.

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Your headphones are shite para. I read the reviews and they all say the sound is nowhere near as good as other headphones in that price range.
I also read that the hiss and crackle you think is coming from vinyl rips is actually coming from your crap headphones lol

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gimp Mask
Your headphones are shite para. I read the reviews and they all say the sound is nowhere near as good as other headphones in that price range.
I also read that the hiss and crackle you think is coming from vinyl rips is actually coming from your crap headphones lol

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I'm shocked you know how to read, seriously. You must be deslexic because you read the wrong reviews you dumb git

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quote:

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Originally posted by parasiticgannon
You must be deslexic

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Yup.

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quote:

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Originally posted by parasiticgannon
You must be deslexic

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Yup.

So good i had to quote it twice lol

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gimp Mask
Your headphones are shite para. I read the reviews and they all say the sound is nowhere near as good as other headphones in that price range.
I also read that the hiss and crackle you think is coming from vinyl rips is actually coming from your crap headphones lol

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Hmm after a quick google search it seems overall that this headphones (which Para brought over a few weeks back and let me give a listen and they sounded fucking fantastic) have gotten great reviews.

http://reviews.cnet.com/headphones/...7-31649804.html

and

http://www.stereophile.com/headphones/806akg/

So either you did an incorrect search (akg k 701) or....

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quote:

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http://reviews.cnet.com

These cans are a piece of shit, the quality of sound is completely off. They actually sound like you are listening to vinyl rips, when in reality it is the piss-poor workmanship of these headphones that is causing the vinyl like "hiss,crackle & pop"

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LOL Para=Pwnd.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gimp Mask
LOL Para=Pwnd.

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Dumbass my first link above was to the Cnet reviews and after reading all 8 posted on there I don't see anything close to your above review. So again...

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