Thread: The death of the DVD. How do people view good music now.

Originally Posted by auscab

Do wireless speakers need charging to work ? Do you have to check battery level and charge ?

most wireless speakers eliminate the speaker wire but have an amp built in instead so you usually plug them into a PowerPoint. There are rechargeable ones though which should get you through some hours.

I would find having to move them To recharge them and having to plan ahead a bit too annoying. If you really want rear sound a Soundbar that emulates surround might be the Way to go but they are physically small speakers with the compromises that requires.

I wanted to go from a component system with floorstand speaker to a soundbar due to room placement constraints.

I researched the heck out of it and went to several stores to audition to as many as I could on the hotlist and the Bose 900 with subwoofer was my syand out pick. It was also the dearest but still peanusts compared to a component system
I have had it for two years now and are happy with the outcome. I mainly stream spotify and utube music

Sonos it the best for integration of multiple speaker setups but sound quality is lacking compared to others IMO

There is another option, known as "Nearfield" or "Desk-Fi", and it is the direction that I have pursued. Don't have a TV now, just use the computer monitor. Tunes are stored on an external hard drive, fed to a music software pgm (JRiver Media Center), then out to an external DAC (computer DACs are rubbish), which goes to a 6 band equaliser, which goes to a small headphone amp. I can then use either headphones or send the feed to a studio monitor system (two stereo monitors + subwoof, so 2.1). All the speakers are 1 metre or less from, at my desk. Monitors = amps built into the speakers.

The sound is killer, but it's probably a $15k system.

It means that I can send YouTube sound through the system, if it is warranted. We don't watch TV, and just use iView or SBS On Demand. I have a Blu-Ray DVD player for the computer (again, small) but I am yet to investigate how it performs for watching DVDs (I'm sure it will be fine).

Re 5.1 vs 2.1: the centre channel is pretty irrelevant because those mono duties can be done with equally split stereo, and the two rear channel don't have much fed to them, so I don't really miss it at all.

I can post more info on request, but as it is a re-investment in components, it may not appeal. It is particularly good for only one viewer.

Good home theatre amplifiers are really quite cheap if all you want is 5.1/ 7.1-7.2
But real music impact won't happen with tiny speakers no matter what subwoofers you have.
You may have WAF problems but if your main speakers are tiny the music will almost always sound thin and tinny
Speakers have always been the weak link in the music reproduction chain simply because good speakers are not cheap.
I am lucky as my music reproduction has always been my own priority and I have good WAF
So I can have decent speaker boxes hung off the walls for out HT.
Lot's of good cheap used speakers around for not much money tho, it is important to have all the speakers in the system the same tho.
My cheap Blu-Ray player plays the music DVDs well enough and the beauty of the change in how some people reproduce music means DVDs can be bought at Op-Shops for around a dollar each now where-as used vinyl is fetching $20- to $50- for rubbish