A.R.S.E.

I bought a nice Yamaha/Wharfdale sound system from Len Wallis Audio in NSW in 1990 (amp, CD player and two good speakers). It has been a great, reliable sound system but after a while the LED that showed the amp was on has died and recently the CD player won't turn on any more. Browsing, it seems a lot has happened in the world of hifi in the past 30 years and I am sadly out of date - it seems like most components can now link by bluetooth rather than cables and I could stream my smart TV and NAS through a sound system.

Can any kind soul in the know bring me up to date with hifi capabilities and what I should plan for a replacement please? I would like to still play CDs, stream music off my NAS, link my TV to an amp and speakers, and also play vinyl.

thanks

smiss

Hey Smith,

I used to have a similar setup as yours but its very different these days. I gone backwards on sound quality but miles forward on convenience.

I have a soundbar plugged into the TV that has the record player connected to it. We play records about twice per year. We also have a Google Home that is playing music almost non stop. Its mono but acceptable sound. Coupled with a YouTube Music subscription we get access to billions of songs.. I listen to about 0.01% of those. But it is fun to be able to play what ever we like.

No NAS at my place, the last one packed it in not long after I got everything into the cloud, it must have suspected we had no need for it. We don't even have the ability to play a CD or Bluray.. and I love it..

I'm still pretty old school, I have a 2ch amp and powered sub hooked up to my htpc and that's it.

You probably just need an amp with multiple inputs and I was going to say a chromecast audio for streaming music from the nas but it seems they don't sell them anymore, maybe you can still find one or there appears to be some similar devices around.

If your speakers are ok then stick with those.

Cables will always be superior to bluetooth so I personally wouldn't even consider that. Shouldn't be hard to find a decent amp with multiple inputs or you may just need a basic amp plus a pre-amp with all the inputs on it.

I discovered that Chromecast wasn't so good for streaming music from Spotify due to the Chromecast using some horrible CODEC (or something like that). I ended up hooking an old android device directly to an audio input on my stuff in order to restore some clarity (and Spotify allows for the device to be remote controlled).

This isn't a problem for the higher quality Bluetooth stuff. You'd have to poke around in the specs to see what bluetooth standards they're using and then do some google foo.

Was that a Chromecast or a Chromecast Audio? I've got one laying around I haven't used for a few years but if memory serves they were meant to be a good quality option supporting the regular audio codecs.

Chromecast and Chromecast Ultra worked the same for me.

The Chromecast Audio was a bit different, you could set up something like Plex on your NAS and stream your mp3s, flacs etc to it and as far as i know it supported those codecs natively. Maybe if streaming spotify etc it faces the same issues as the regular chromecasts but I think smiss was more concerned with streaming from his nas.

I bought a Yamaha MusicCast amp/receiver/CD player and turntable. I'll wire my existing speakers up to it, but the phono can connect via wifi and it can connect to wireless speakers in other rooms, as well as the TV I think.

It can also stream from my NAS, plus Spotify etc controlled by an app on the phone. Seems to be just what I want.

Arrives next week!