Sometime between going to bed last night and mid morning today I made a deal and with myself and my wife about the thing I will just call "the audio thing" in our house. Actually it is good news. I decided a couple of things:
1.) I have too many unfinished, and sort-of half done audio projects
2.) I have finally decided that my office is just too damned small and cramped for what one would normally be called a "system" in the sense of the word I think most of us are used to using.
3.) Given that we don't watch TV -- only movies -- and that typically we would do that in our bedroom and not the living room, and also given that I would *love* to have that extra space on the rack in the main system that the TV would occupy, and also not have it acting as an acoustic abberation, we came up with the following:
I'm going to take my baby Mapleshade rack up to the bedroom, along with my stock 2910 and the Ferrari Red Onix X-LS speakers I just scored on AC, and get some sort of decent, but not too expensive reciever that can pull it all together -- multiplayer, amplification, FM tuner, possibly a lightly modded or stock SB down the road, and have a headphone output for private listening/.
So, this is where my An friends enter the picture -- I need a decent, not too expensive receiver that can do all this *and* be mostly usable by a person who can't see or use fancy menus, LCD displays, etc. Obviously, there is never going to be a piece of gear in this category which doesn't use at least an LCD display, but basically... the more tactile buttons the better.
The first name that came to mind was Outlaw, and since my neighbor has an Outlaw receiver (approx. $600 purchase price), I went to check it out. No go. Way too complicated, uses a menu system with a continuous jog wheel and LCD display.
Is there perhaps a less expensive model, or another brand that might have more of a button oriented user interface. Don't need tons of power -- probly 15-30 watts, don't need multichannel or anything like that. Just tuner, amplifiers, inputs for multiplayer and another component, and a headphone output.
Any suggestions? Ideas?
The rest of the story will unfold, but my office system will evolve into a system that can do double duty for decent listening and audio editing/mixing/mastering, and will have my, soon to be builtm, Mapleshade headamp for serious chilling in the man-cave.
Oh, and lots of redundant and unfinished stuff will be moving out (that's part of the agreement with my wife), so stay tuned to the classifieds this coming week.
This is actually going to be very cool in the long run, and may at least be a right turn on the road to nirvana.
Thanks,
Jim
