This not one of the life-changing threads. I just need a little help. As I was digging through my storage unit, I found a stereo I bought about 10 years ago. It’s a decent quality bookshelf system (Onkyo XB7) in its original boxes. I used it for about 4 months before I moved and forgot I had it. (I moved around a lot since then.) In the intervening decade, I’ve stopped listening to radio and CD’s in the house. It’s all on the computer. I use Bluetooth speakers when I listen from the iPad or computer now.
I know I should get rid of the thing. I really do. I can’t help thinking I might want to use it in the future. Can anyone point out something I’m missing to convince me to keep the stereo? Right now the emotional side (“keep it because you never know”) is almost losing to the practical side (“get rid of it, you don’t use it”). Thanks.
You could plug it into the computer, or buy a Bluetooth receiver for it and have real stereo sound that is probably better than your Bluetooth speaker.
If there’s an apocalypse and the Internet goes down, if you loot a generator it will allow you to play CDs to keep your sanity, and to receive emergency AM broadcasts (I assume it has a radio).
The speakers make the biggest difference in sound quality, so you could buy a pair of used high-quality bookshelf speakers, use that as an amp and have very high quality sound from a nice small stereo.
thirdname, good point about power outages. I’m pretty sure I can justify a power inverter and decent battery. No point in suffering during natural disasters, right?
I have a detached garage that is set behind the house a ways and the wifi doesn’t reach out there. Need a radio in the garage when I’m doing whatever in there.
I have my office PC connected to my Onkyo integrated amp>M&K satellites> subwoofer. Sound quality is great with CD/DVD/Streamed sources (Pandora) and mp3 files are OK also. With 85 watts RMS on tap, you can go background or floor-shaking with fidelity and ‘real’ bass. What’s not to like?
A BT receiver and you’d have a sweet wireless garage/basement system. I also agree that plugging in your computer and using it for that would work much better than most crappy computer speakers. I had a buddy that used his old Poineer HT receiver for his desktop playing games in 5.1. It was awesome!
The only things I have left from my stereo is the amplifier and speakers. I’ve replaced the 5 CD changer with a used Android cell phone in “Airplane Mode”. It has over 200 hundred CD’s on its SD card and makes a wonderful CD player! (Wire with stereo RCA jacks plugged into the cell phone’s earphone jack.)
I also use the amplifier/speakers for TV surround sound.
I have an almost identical set up and it sounds great with my phone or laptop streaming Pandora or other high quality sources, somewhat less great with MP3 sources, but fine nonetheless. In the man-cave I have my old Sansui G5700 and top-notch studio monitors. Brilliant sound clarity, chest-compression bass, and as loud as you want it. I have some kind of sound system in every room with a mini-jack. I don’t ever listen to CDs or LPs or tapes any more. Everything is on my several portable digital devices.
My boyfriend has some old Klipsch speakers stuck in the attic. I had no idea we could get a bluetooth receiver and be able to use them. He’s a tech nerd so I wonder why he didn’t, either.
You’ll also need an amplifier or receiver to power the speakers, unless they have built-in amplifiers such as computer speakers usually do. Used stereo receivers are a dime a dozen on Craigslist.
I bought my first stereo in 1968. After I replaced it with a better stereo about a decade later, I put it out in the garage so that I could listen to music while working on cars. It finally gave up the ghost in 2007. I got almost 40 years out of it!
Sound quality is one of the few things in the tech world that is degenerating rather than getting better in general. You can still buy good speakers but they tend to be pricey and very hipsterish.
OTOH, almost any quality speakers from the the past can easily be rigged up to play music or any other sounds from your computer or smartphone as others have said. There are cheap connectors for almost any combination. I recently bought a BlueTooth receiver for some excellent speakers I had in my bedroom sitting there unused for for about $50. I now have nightclub quality sound controllable from my pocket whenever I walk into the room and could generate a police response from neighbor complaints if I wanted it to. More realistically, it can high quality classical music or nature sounds while I am falling asleep.
Most PC and Smartphone speakers are horrible by comparison yet my setup is likely cheaper because all I did was by cheap adapters and recycle quality speakers.
I sometimes feel like we’ve failed the current generation. My nieces and nephews have absolutely no idea what it means to have/hear a good stereo system (i.e., decent speakers with an appropriate amplifier or receiver). My nieces and nephews think of earbuds and iPad speakers as being perfectly adequate.
When I last moved, I had to put a couple of my audio systems in storage. When one of my nephews started college, I found that I could not even GIVE him a sound system that I would have killed for when I was in college. I’m talking about truly serious sound, too.
But, like most people, I do use media players on my home network to access my digital music and video files rather than flipping CDs/DVDs in and out.
Maybe I should be heading over to the Marketplace…
