And so it begins!
The Lounge was the first room we decorated when we moved-in nearly 21 years ago, and although it’s worn well, it’s looking a bit drab, when compared to the other, more recently decorated parts of the house.
Being us, simplicity and speediness didn’t come into it, and every square inch of the room will be changing soon, in some way - walls, lights, carpets and even the three-piece suite. Stay tuned!
The biggest change for me was the decision to ‘embrace the new’ and go totally diskless for all my music. I’ve now managed to convert 99.9% of my tunes – around 16000 tracks to (250-275 VBR kbit/s) MP3s - and so it’s goodbye to the CD tower that’s occupied one corner of the room since 1996!
My new whizzy amp - when I get it fully up-and-running - the Yamaha RX-A1060 will ‘talk to’ the PC and make it a lot easier to select and play music. Yes, I know, (apparently, according to audiophiles) “digital music sounds cold and loses some quality in the conversion”, but to be honest, I really can’t tell the difference, and the benefits of having instant access to ALL my collection, at the push of a button (or two) easily outweighs these downsides.
Therefore, it’s ‘goodbye’ to my trusty hi-fi stack system (that cost me a King’s ransom back in ‘95) to be replaced by just ONE box to ‘rule them all’.
In preparation for the change-over, today’s task was to disconnect everything behind the hi-fi. In doing so, I was reminded of how complex this original setup was with what seemed like ‘miles’ of cabling. I re-discovered twin phono/coax/optical cables, as well as speaker leads, running in all directions under the carpet, as well as up and down the wall cavities (so they stayed hidden) whilst linking-up with the TV/DVD player and various other AV units that I’ve owned over the years.
Well, at least going forward, with HDMI cables these days now being the main connecting technology, it should all be a lot simpler getting it all up-and-running.
...or will it? Already, just reading the first few pages of the Manual, there's a massive learning-curve ahead!
More chaos news to follow…
