Home Stereo Rigs, GRM Style

There's probably already a thread on this somewhere, but whatever.

I know there are a few audiophiles here. And being that we are on GRM, we usually lean toward the cheaper side of things. I've constructed a cheap rig out of the following:

Sherwood RX-4109 Digital Receiver ($20 from Salvation Army)

Gemini DJQ1200 direct drive turntable ($20 from some dude on Craigslist)

(not my pic) 80's Mirage 250 bookshelf speakers ($FREE from a friend's dad when I was about 12)

So, for $40 total, I have a nasty little rig that cranks and sounds awesome. I just got the receiver yesterday from a thrift store to replace this Technics receiver that's been giving me fits:

So far, I'm very happy with it. Sounds clean and powerful.

What is everyone else running for gear?

I'm not near it to get the exact specs, but I am using an old Awia two channel receiver/cd/tape combo that powers my old Bose 901 series VI speakers (free!) And into the phono input I run my old Sears turntable/8-track that I picked up at Goodwill for $15. It all looks pretty janky, but it sounds pretty good. I'd upgrade the system, but most receivers I find aren't two channel.

Salvation Army - FTW.

My five CD carousal died a while back.

Big box electronics stores don’t even carry them anymore…Amazon Etc. wants ~$180…I walked into my local Salvation Army and they had like six units sitting on the shelf, two of which were an exact match to my old unit…$20 straight up, no tax…seven day exchange policy…sweet!

My dad builds speaker cabinets for fun. He'll recondition old cabinets with new speakers and wiring or pull speakers and build them into cool old suitcases he finds at Salvation Army stores. He powers them with little bluetooth amps or stuff scored from ebay deals and spends hours listening and tweaking, adding and switching out capacitors to polish the sound.

I'll see if I can get some more info and pics of some of his projects. I feel like some of you here would think it's cool.

Drives my mom nuts since there are ~20 sets of speaker cabinets in various stages of completion stashed in their house

Very nice for the price there SilverFleet. My setups are not GRM budget friendly, but I do buy refurbished equipment when I can to get about 1/2 off retail though. My most budget friendly setup is a Samsung Galaxy TAB S2 tablet + AudioQuest Dragonfly Red DAC/amp based personal audio config for headphones:

My setup is pretty GRM budget friendly.

Ill also use my phone from time to time.

I mostly listen to NPR & podcasts, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to build a set of Overnight Sensations for some reason.

My home theater is grassroots since I figure if you're buying new and not doing it yourself you'd have 4 or 5 times more money into it than I do.
I have a Pioneer Elite powering 5 Magnepan speakers, a Soundstream monoblock amp powering a DIY subwoofer. I have a Samsung BlueRay player and a PC for my media center.
In the garage I have an old Pioneer 2-channel receiver and two Advent cabinets that I have a lot of guilt for because they are in the garage getting dirty and stinky. They are very nice speakers.

BlueInGreen44 wrote: My dad builds speaker cabinets for fun. He'll recondition old cabinets with new speakers and wiring or pull speakers and build them into cool old suitcases he finds at Salvation Army stores. He powers them with little bluetooth amps or stuff scored from ebay deals and spends hours listening and tweaking, adding and switching out capacitors to polish the sound. I'll see if I can get some more info and pics of some of his projects. I feel like some of you here would think it's cool. Drives my mom nuts since there are ~20 sets of speaker cabinets in various stages of completion stashed in their house

I'm getting pretty close to building a bluetooth 2.1 system for the living room, and considering something like you're talking about with the Advents I have in the garage.
Please do post some pics and specs, I'd love to see his work.

I've got some $2 thrift shop '70s Pioneer speakers, a $10 AM/FM tuner, and a homemade tube amp that I have probably $50 into it. That's my office rig. I need to fix a short in the speaker/wiring.

My workshop rig will become my 'listening area' rig once my basement family room is done. It's a 2A3 tube amp that I might have $300 in it. Maybe a bit more.

that goes in this:

with a 12A*7 '4S Universal Preamp' ($50-100 maybe, don't remember.)

with an old FM/AM digital tuner from Goodwill and playing through some home built full range 4" Fostex speakers. About $100 from Madisound.com and a bit more for the birch plywood.

Did some digging on that Sherwood receiver. They sold it new up until recently for $99, and used ones are going anywhere between $40-90 online, plus shipping. I'd call my $20 snag a win. It has 100 watts per channel (2 channels) and lots of headroom. I cranked it to 30 (out of ???) and it was loud and clear with more power behind it.

ok, now I want all of this.

Let me go back and pretend I didn't click on this thread.

What timing for this thread to pop up! I was shopping NAD receivers during my lunch break. Evidently they have pixel problems too...

That pair of KEF speakers may have to wait though...

Edit- scratch that after seeing RossD's post. Tubes may be the way for me

I picked up a pair of Koss M90 Plus speakers with damaged surrounds. Still trying to figure out what I want to do with them. Can't seem to find a refoam kit or identical replacement drivers. I'm tempted to just order an Overnight Sensations MTM kit and fit it into the existing cabinet. The dimensions are just about right for it.

That said, I've got about 3-4 receivers hanging around, just not enough speakers.

Mine are not totally GRM style, but here it goes.

Living room: 5 year old Yamaha stereo receiver (bought new), U-Turn Audio turntable from their kickstarter, Apple Airport into a Schiit Modi DAC (for iTunes), a Kenwood disc carousel from Goodwill ($2.50), and some Polk bookshelf speakers.

Basement: SMSL Q5 Pro, old DVD player for discs ($2.50 from Goodwill again), Dayton cheapo speakers. Eventually will have some sort of wifi device for iTunes.

Work "shop" (actually just room): NobSound Micro amp/bluetooth/etc, some Amazon speakers, source is an old computer running Media Monkey (using the same library as iTunes, stored on a NAS).

Office: Raspberry Pi 3 w/Hifiberry Digi+ digital out, cheap little FiiO Taishi(?) DAC, Dayton Audio APA150 amp, Wharfedale speakers. This setup plays iTunes only.

My setup has slowly grown and, while value was in mind, I haven't exactly constrained my spending. Also, it can go waaaay too loud for my condo so it's setup at work (double-height concrete laboratory).

First, the source material. I used to use iTunes Match to have my extensive music library synced at work but the 192 kbps streaming bitrate was starting to become a problem. I use Tidal HiFi instead, which I can tolerate at $10 a month. I might just load up an external hard drive and nix the subscription.

Next, how I get it from the computer to the speakers. I prefer to use a good USB DAC and Schiit makes good schiit (heh). My Modi 2U has been perfect for what I need and played very nicely with my cheap receiver (I used to use an AudioSource AMP-100 and would recommend it for anyone who only wants to power budget bookshelf speakers). As a treat to myself for earning my PhD, I... uh... went overkill with the amplifier and found a used Parasound Halo A21. Because a "pre-amp" is required to attenuate the volume from the DAC to the amp, I snagged a Schiit Sys for $50.

This is a lot of wires. The important thing is that I'm using good beefy RCA (thanks Monoprice) from my Modi to my Sys, and then my Sys to my Parasound left and right inputs. The amplified outputs of the Parasound go through Coboc 14 AWG speaker cable (thanks Newegg) to Bowers & Wilkins 685 S2 bookshelf speakers, which sound marvelous for the price (I paid $500 used).

Something I love about the Parasound is that it has loop outputs. This means that I can daisy-chain off of my volume-attenuated signal and connect directly to my amplified Outlaw Ultra-X12 subwoofer. Because bookshelf speakers don't produce extremely low frequency bass, no matter how good they are, I don't need a high-pass filter. The sub's built-in crossover is good enough to prevent overlapping signal in the 60-120 Hz range. In the future, I want a second sub and want to run them in stereo, something I can't do with most pre-amps or receivers but can with this setup.

In conclusion, my audio setup is worth a Miata but sounds a lot better. In the future, I'm also able to upgrade to just about any speaker and power it without any extra equipment or tweaking (mmmmm... Magnepans).

In reply to paranoid_android74:

I subscribe to this gentleman's newsletter, metaphorically speaking of course as he doesn't have an actual newsletter: http://www.cascadetubes.com/

He's on http://diyaudioprojects.com/ as SunCalc. DIY Audio Projects is where I picked up a lot of the information for tube amps. Not a lot of foot traffic over there but some very sharp people, but there seems to be some 'mystic' audiophile people there, too. You can decide for yourself if that's a good or bad thing.

I've had them almost 20 years now, and I'm still loving my Vandersteen 2CE signature main pair. :)

Pioneer SC-1323-K D3 class receiver. Full digital amplification 125Watts. Paid $280 for it after it arrived banged up and missing the remote. Boston Acoustics floorstanding mains. Nice sized Boston Acoustic surrounds. 12 inch Boston acoustic subwoofer. This was gradually upgraded and accumulated over several years.