good enough is good enough for me, thank you!
i was previously looking at the M-Audio Transit but it doesnt have RCA
would the Nuforce be better then the M-Audio if i dont get one with RCA?

 

Everything I've heard by NuForce has been golden. That said, everything by M-Audio has overperformed for it's price.

My advice? Don't break your budget. . .

 

Great post, I'm the same way. I used to hang out over at House of Stereo listening to all the esoteric audio gear and spent a goodly amount of money on McIntosh, Krell, Adcom and exotic interconnect and loudspeaker wiring.

I pretty much tried all the audio formats - in fact, I still have a nice Sony DAT deck, though it hasn't been hooked up in ages (I also have a LD player sitting in my office closet and like 50+ LD's, some good Criterion stuff too). Went through a tube phase, rejected the convenience of CD's for Vinyl, etc., etc.

I still have a nice set of Phase Linear BP20's but most of my gear migrated to more feature rich HT based equipment (like Pioneer and mid-level Denon). I have some nice Sennheiser's, but my Shure E3C's get way more use.

One of my 2009 projects in to convert all our CD's over to MP3 format - I'm thinking 256K sample rates will produce decent copies, and for certain disks, I'll probably rip a FLAC copy as well.

 

Vinyl sales up...

vinyl final nail in cd's coffin

 

I listen to plenty of digital music but Coltrane and Rollins sound best when listening to vinyl through BIG horns.

 

here's a question for audiophiles.

how do you deal with : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

is there any way to get music that hasn't been totally f'ed up long before it reaches my speakers? aside from looking for vinyl records... and buying a record player...

 

Go to plenty of live shows.

 

Unless you've got the Magico Ultimates, I've not been 100% sold on horns.

There's a certain "euphonia," a push, that I hear from the Avantgarde's that I don't hear in other speaker designs. . . it made the strings seem a little too "woofy" (modern instruments started sounding like they had gut strings), it veiled the ring of the Horns (serious flaw for me ), and it added a euphonia to bass. . .

. . . which might work well with anything from Rudy Van Gelder.

 

Buy from more independent labels. . . who are interested in artistic merit and integrity over trying to squash sound for FM trackers to find.

 

hmm, I don't hear any of those flaws in the Avantgards I have listened too. I was not a fan of the first couple versions of the Uno although they did improve later on. The early version of both the Unos and Duos were a pain in the ass to set up correctly and obviously very revealing and dependent on upsteam equipmet. Later versions were far easier to set up but still tweaky. I always found the Uno worked better in large rooms and the Duo worked better in small rooms go figure. Probably do to the crossover point, the Uno had integration issues up close and needed room to become cohesive, not an issue with the lower crossover point of the Duo.

Some people like horns, others don't. After living with horns, most conventional speakers tend to bore me. I appreciate what a good conventional speaker does and can admire their performance but I just find my attention starts to wander......