So you are interested in Audio are you? Well first let me tell you what I have got under my shoestring budget.
CD PLAYER : Marantz CD67SE
AMPLIFIER : Marantz PM66 KI Signature
TAPE DECK : Yamaha KX580SE
MD DECK : Sony MDS-JE510
PROCESSOR : Yamaha DSP-E492
DVD PLAYER: Panasonic A330-MU
Now Let's move on. I have recently upgraded my Amplifier to a Marantz PM66 KI signature. Among you people, some may think yeah right there is hardly a difference from changing a component or changing a cable or two here and there but let me tell you there are differences when cables are changed and in some cases may make your whole system sound different. I used cabletalk 3.1 speaker cable and then switched to cabletalk 4.1 and suddenly the bass was more extended and more powerful but was now a bit boomy so i bought some concrete slabs and waalaaa the boom had gone and the bass had tightened up. For those who aren't convinced there is a difference I recommend you goto a Hifi dealer and ask for a demonstration of this and I'm sure you'll be able to hear the difference.
Different Formats
So here we go really there are actually two formats for audio at the moment and that is the audio cassette or tape and the compact disc or CD. The audio tape is a plastic tape which is coated with magnetic substances and and is passed through a magnet which produces and induces different patterns onto the tape by manipulatingthe magnetic substance. The Compact disc is really a plastic disk which has pits and hills on it. The player uses a laser light to shine onto the disk and the output is given by the differing reflections when the laser hits the pit or groove, one refleects light while the other will not. Apart from these two, manufacturers have tried to produce different formats for the public to use and one of these might become one of the future formats as in 10 years time it would be found as something quite normal in the home. There is Super CD this is a push by Sony and another company for a 96Khz sampling CD. The more sapling as in the more times a sec the player scans a waveform the more accurate the reproduction will be. Also there is DVD which many companies are still fighting about what kind of audio format should be standard.
Moving on we have DAT, developed by the original makers of the audio cassette. The Digital Audio Tape was a tape but was also digital as in the data was stored as a series of ones and zeros so there is less distortion compared to analogue tapes. The format was of a high sound quality and was used by studios but was too expensive for the home consumer market.
Then came Sony who had designed something called the Minidisc, at first everyone thought they had bought the miinidisc out just to hit back at DAT as early players didn't have very good sound quality but as it evolved people started to notice the advantages of it, it was cheaper than DAT and the size also was very small compared to CD and also it was also rewriteable unlike CD which at the time was very expensive and still is for rewriteable ones. Now in japan Minidisc has completely taken over from audio and is satrting to take off elsewhere as well.
Welcome to my Audio Page 
