I bought a KICK-ASS HI-FI SYSTEM for €1000 (without hearing any of it first)

I

bought

a complete hi-fi

system

for 1,000 euros, three new components and I

bought

them without listening to any of them

first

. We've made several videos over the last few years about thousand euro hi-fi

system

s, but in this one I wanted to feature brands that haven't really been used much on this channel and no, I didn't consult with any of the manufacturers involved in this video. I just went out and bought their equipment and we started with the speakers that come from Dali, which is a Danish speaker company and I was looking for something super affordable, incredibly affordable, like 200 euros, affordable and I landed on the Spector 2, which is not their most affordable speaker. small, it's the one on top because the Specter 1 is the smallest and the reason I went with dali because I haven't featured them much on this channel before, but also because they make their own drivers in-house at their facility, which I believe is in the Ahus and dahlia outskirts are big on using wood or paper fiber to craft. its own drivers inside the Specter 2, we get a five and a quarter inch mid-base driver and then a one inch soft dome tweeter.

The nominal impedance of these speakers is rated by Dali at six ohms, but the sensitivity is a little lower than the average at 84.5 db. That means that if we turn them up a notch and sit a meter in front of them, we will register 84.5 db of sound pressure levels in that listening position and then in the seat, it will probably translate to about 74.5 db, which is perfect for me. but obviously we need an amplifier that gives us more than one watt per channel because music is not a steady state signal, it goes up and down and we need more watts to be able to deliver the peaks of the music, so I bought a rotel.

Integrated amplifier Why I chose Rotel well basically because I have had a lot of Rotel equipment in the past. I have been to the factory. They wind their own transformers in the factory, which is really impressive, so I guess that was another reason I chose Rotel. because i was there and saw how their stuff is done, so i bought the a11 tribute amp. Now this is a modified version, if you will, of the original a11 and those modifications came from the late Ken Ishiwata who is famous for being I guess he was the face of marantz for many years and sadly he passed away at the end of 2019 and the project It was finished by Carl Hines Fink, who is sort of hired as a speaker designer, but who also runs the think design team speakers, so A11 basically features changes made by Kenishiwata and Karlheinz Fink and those changes are really related to components like capacitor resistors and things like that, but also damping materials in the chassis.

The a11 tribute gives us 50 watts per channel into 8 ohms. It is a class AB amplifier. It has five analog inputs, one of which is a moving magnet phono input. There is a DAC inside the a11 tribute but it can only be accessed via Bluetooth and that Bluetooth input supports AAC and aptx, but if we want to play lossless streams we need an external one. dac now in 2022 i need a dac that has a toslink input as well as usb and maybe coax speed too but i also wanted to get a dac that has a sample rate display on the front now the reason why i want to use a dac with the Toslink input is because I am going to be outputting digital audio from my TV and the reason I wanted the sample rate displayed on the front of the DAC is to see what audio sample rate is coming out of the TV through that Toslink connection.

There aren't many affordable DACs that give us that Toslink input sample rate display, so I went with the top e30 DAC which has USB Toslink coax and obviously has analog outputs and then a display on the front that also tells us the level of volume and it comes with a remote control so we can also change the volume and turn it on and off, so it's a pretty attractive package for not a lot of money and that top remote looks like this now, I don't use it to dim volume on this system hifi i use the dac at full volume because i use the amp and it's very reassuring to change the volume on this hifi system or if i'm sitting here i use the remote control supplied by rotel and it's a beast, look at that, in comparison With the coverage, he is a very thick boy.

I'm not a fan of this type of remote, but I assume this is also used to control other components in the Tributo line and I believe you can also access the tone controls built into the Tribute a11 with this remote if you don't want to get up and use the menu system on the front panel and there's also a built-in setting, I guess you'd call it a volume setting that's really designed for listening at lower volume levels, so it just boosts the bass a little bit and a little bit. the treble when the volume is really low because our ear's sensitivity is much less to the extreme frequencies at low volumes now.

On these three components I spent a total of 938 euros. Now you'll see behind me that I have the Dali Specter 2 on a pair of fairly expensive speaker stands. Obviously you don't have to do that and I would recommend looking at Atacama if you live in the UK and are looking for a very affordable speaker stand. I don't really know what is sold in the US, but definitely buy in your local area because importing stands from abroad is an expensive business because shipping costs are high, but you don't have to put these speakers on stands, they come with a few little rubber feet that you can stick on the bottom if you want to put them on a low board, although I wouldn't recommend putting them on a low board because ideally your speakers should be on the same level. tweeter so that it is fairly close to ear level now you might ask what about the cables.

I am using some quest audio speaker cables available in the market. I think they're about $50 now. This thousand dollar hi-fi system sounds fantastic. Sounds great. it's completely pleasant, not too bright, not too etched, it doesn't have that kind of window cleaning vibe that I talk a lot about, it's a little bit warm, it's quite forgiving, but it's very easy to listen to, so if it were for upgrade this system in the future I wouldn't upgrade the dac I wouldn't upgrade the amp and I wouldn't change the speakers what I would do is add a subwoofer because spectrum 2 doesn't go much below 55 54 hertz which is not especially low and the amp Rotel has preamp outputs, so we could easily add a sub in boost mode using those preamp outputs.

I think Dali makes a matching sub for these inspector 2 and I think it sells for about $500 so Yeah it's another expense but that's where I would go if I were to upgrade this system to the next level because I think adding a subwoofer It would make a big difference here now. Whenever you talk about building an affordable hi-fi system, you never do it. too far from someone telling you that you know you should really buy second hand because you get much better deals for it, yes, but I'm not going to go into that here, if you're thinking along those lines then you should leave. and listen to episode 34 of the darco audio podcast where I address this topic head-on, so now all of this leads me to guess what I would call my five golden rules for buying a hi-fi system blind without being able to listen to it or audition it

first

now my first rule is to always, if possible, buy from a retailer or establishment that offers a money back guarantee or at least store credit if you don't like it, so I bought the speakers and the DAC on Amazon Germany, so I guess I have a month to actually audition them and then send them back if I don't like them, I'm probably not going to do that, however, the amp, the rotel, I bought it from my local dealer and I know that if not I won't I like it, I can pick it up and even if they don't give me a refund, they'll give me store credit, so those kinds of arrangements give me peace of mind because I realize that not everyone has local hifi stores nearby.

They and many people have to bet on something, take a risk, but don't expose yourself financially to a risk that you really can't afford because if you buy something and can't return it, you're stuck. with it and that brings me to my second rule: never max out your budget, don't buy equipment that you can't afford to walk away from like I could afford to spend three grand on this sci-fi system I made. I didn't spend a lot why because if I'm stuck with something I really find it a lot easier to resell it and not take too big a loss and then the extra 2 grand gives me room to buy other things if I need to like them. subwoofer or if I didn't like the amplifier, selling it and buying another gives me a break.

That breathing room in my budget gives me flexibility. It allows me to buy other things and really build experience. The temptation is always to think well. I have so many thousands of dollars so I have to spend all that money on a hifi system and that's fine if you know what you're doing, if you have experience buying a hifi system, but if it's your first time doing it , please. don't go over your budget, give yourself a break and that brings us to my third golden rule for buying hifi equipment blindly or without an audition: try to buy from trusted brands, brands that have been around for many years, darli has been around for many years.

For many years, Rotel Topping was not so much the reason I bought the Topping, other than its feature set which was very specific to what I wanted, so the sample rate display and Toslink input was also because I had great experience with your dac d10s a couple ago. many years ago and brands like topping are very popular on amazon, but if you go to your hifi dealer, your main dealer, you are more likely to find these kinds of big, well-known brands like denon or marantz or bowers and wilkins or jbl and those brands that if you've never built a hifi system before, those are brands that I would start with because there's a reason they've been around for so long, golden rule number four, ignore the advice you hear on the internet says You should spend 50% of your budget on your speakers.

I don't think that will be true anymore when shopping at this price because very very good and affordable speakers are really easy to find so look at Wolfdale Mission and then Dali $200. Great speakers, but that's not the case with amplifiers. 200 amps are not so easily available. You really need to spend three four hundred euros on your amplifier, so more than on your speakers, especially if you are buying from historic or trusted brands because you won. I can't get a Marantz, Denon or Rotel amplifier for under, say, 400 euros, even the nadc 316 bee v2 that I have been excited about in the past costs 449 euros retail, so you have to think about 400 euros or more for your amplifier, which is why, when I started, I looked at speakers every day that sold for around 200 euros, because I knew that the amplifier was going to cost me much more and my fifth golden rule for buying hi-fi equipment blindly is no, No.

Do it unless you really have to, unless you are guaranteed your money back or store credit, the best thing to do is go and work with a local hifi dealer to find some gear that fits you or at least part of the system. but if you're thinking about waiting a while, even though I don't have a hifi dealer near me, it closed 10 years ago or whatever, then you have to go to the next town or city and if that's a long way. then take a weekend. The point is that you have to work a little. I can't give you a shopping list of things.

You should buy equipment and forget about the hi-fi system. No hi-fi reviewer on the planet can do that. You have to do it. Definitely do some work, no doubt, and that involves trial and error, which involves buying things, shipping them back, and then buying something else, and then buying something else. That's why you shouldn't max out your budget because the trial and error process is where you learn and when you learn you gain experience and that experience helps you buy better equipment in the future if you're wondering, John, why did you buy this audio system? of

1000

euros and how does it compare with another system of

1000

euros?

I would say I'm glad you asked because we'll get into that in the next video, but if you think this video was helpful, hit the like button below if you like my attitude toward ultimate high-performance audio. fi gear and doesn't always focus on expensive things. You should know that if you watch this channel regularly, you know that I jump between really cheap things and really expensive things. If you like it, subscribe to this. channel and as always, thank you very much for watching, but don't get too hung up on cables at this level, reasonably well made cables are totally fine here, totally fine.