The (upstairs) study audio system

Note: With the upheavals of the new central heating system, and my decision to "relocate" from the study down to the back half of the living room, there is currently no audio system as such in what was the study. Mind you, there are enough bits and pieces floating around to make one up again. So these notes are currently (July 2010) an historical footnote.

Nor, for that matter, will there be a study for very much longer. As soon as the new vinyl floor is down I shall start moving back some, at least, of my books that are currently offsite in a room in a storage warehouse.

[last updated: 15 June 2010]

The Denon RCD-100 is a decent one-box stereo audio amplifier, CD deck and FM/AM tuner. I use it just as an amplifier, however. The CD is not up to the quality of my newer NAD (whose optical digital input is useful for plumbing in the Sony Freeview box I use purely as a digital radio). And I've unhooked the FM aerial because of the time discrepancies between analogue FM and Freeview terrestrial digital TV/radio signals.¹ The amplifier also has an optical digital output that I hoped to put to good use with a minidisc recorder, but I never found its output to be reliable (unusually² for Denon kit). It also has a second set of speaker outputs that I use to drive my PWB electrostatic headphones.³

Having used my custom-made audio/video switchbox for a decade before 'upgrading' to a full-blown A/V amplifier⁴ in 1998, I now find my Sony minidisc recorder makes a very useful audio switchbox⁵ (with its three separate inputs) between the two PCs and the separate Freeview TV/radio that I use just as a digital radio up here.

I was sufficiently dischuffed with A/V amp #1 I even mentioned it to Carol a short while before I sold it back to Julian Richer's people for half price:

Footnotes

¹  I intend to resist DAB until the UK adopts a decent system, and stops cramming too many channels at too low a bit rate on the obsolete system they have foisted upon a hapless public. (Amusing comment here.)
²  Though, come to think of it, my first unit was actually replaced after a couple of months when its volume control started setting itself to maximum on its own — an incredibly irritating shortcoming when a youngster is asleep in the next room.
³  These don't get much use since, when in the house on my own (my usual state), I can simply turn up the volume without upsetting anyone. But they do sound utterly gorgeous. (Better, in fact, than any of my loudspeakers.)
⁴  I dipped an initial toe in the water with a £450 box from Richer Sounds (the Korean brand has mercifully been expunged from my long-term memory — as was the unit itself from the system, within a couple of months). I've hated audible mains hum ever since being introduced to it by my first-ever amplifier, an Amstrad unit, in 1972. After the Koreans, I crossed a short stretch of sea to the Japanese, opting for the relatively high-end (£1,600) Yamaha DSP-1, and financing it by the simple expedient of selling my IBM shares now that they had clawed their laborious way back up to parity with their starting price. There's a picture of the Yamaha here. It offered Y-C video switching, and had eight digital audio inputs. Plus, of course, it could handle the Dolby AC-3 RF signals that had been squeezed, by then, on to LaserDiscs so they carried full 5.1 surround sound for a year or so before DVDs came along and swept LDs away. The Yamaha lasted for not quite eleven years of virtually daily use, so I have no complaints. Money well spent.
⁵  Just as I used a JVC SVHS tape deck in a similar way for routing combined audio and video signals around in the living room back in 2001.