New to the site but hungry for tunes

[wild1bill]

Howdy folks, I've been driving a semi truck for the last bunch of years and have not had a TV or any kind of home music but a boombox for the last 20 years. The last home sound equipment I had was Optonica, JVC, Pioneer, sony with DLK loud speakers. System was around 250+ watts. I'm in need of some help trying to figure what kind of home gear to get today. Over the years I have collected quite a few CD's, but only listen to them in the truck. Will the digital stuff work well with any of the older type gear? I do not want to buy throw-away cheap stuff. Is there a way for the sharp digital sound to sound kind of like vinyl? Are there "Listening " rooms anymore? Any assistance will be helpful. "If it's too loud, you are too old"

 

[ssddx]

you should be able to get new digital players to play nice with older sound equipment. you could use adapters but also could buy a new amplifier which already has the right inputs.

i'm no audiophile but 192/256kbps mp3 or aac lossless sound just as good as cd to me. the benefit of digital is portability and ease of selection provided you can store all of your songs in digital format. an 80gb ipod can handle about 20,000 songs at typical mp3 quality. a system which uses a pc hard drive in the 1-2tb range can store many more, even in lossless formats. you may need a player device to read them though.

i'm not sure what you mean about sharp digital sound sounding like vinyl. the sound quality on lossless digital files are great. if you want to change how the music sounds then you can use either an equalizer or sound mode to change this depending on your components.

by listening rooms are you refering to places where you can listen to speakers before you buy them? i know best buy still has home theater speaker rooms and any major speaker vendor should as well. the good stores are few and far between though.

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what exactly are you looking to purchase?

are you looking to keep your existing speakers and upgrade components so that you may use digital sources or replace everything?

if you plan on upgrading speakers are you looking for satelite, bookshelf or floor standing units? do you plan on buying a subwoofer not? if not then bookshelf or florostanding units should provide enough bass output. how many speakers do you want?

do you want to be able to take your digital songs with you on the road and play them in the truck? an ipod is definitely a good way to accomplish this but using a stereo which can read and play off a pc hard drive is another way. provided your truck can accept aftermarket players the versions with the large fold out touchscreens are ideal for this.

you may want to provide details on what exactly you want as well as your budget.