Good, cheap and under appreciated music source.

[steve-z]

Hifi is an expensive hobby (usually) and it’s possible to pay a great deal of money for any item in the music reproduction chain. Occasionally though you can come across a little jewel which sounds great and is dirt cheap. Since November 2018 I’ve been using such an item in my second tier bedroom setup, I’m talking about the Amazon Echo Dot, purchased for the princely sum of £24.99 and probably the cheapest source you could have in your setup. Dismissed by a lot of people as just another smart speaker, often assuming as it’s a single speaker that it outputs in mono, on its own it does, but the auxiliary output socket is stereo.
Since I’ve been using it I’ve been amazed just how good the sound quality is, considering the price the DAC chip inside it probably cost about 50p or less. Since getting it I’ve been subscribing to Amazon Music Unlimited which for single item use is just £3.99 a month, I believe it outputs 320kbps AAC. To my ears the sound quality it produces is pretty well indistinguishable in most circumstances from Apple Lossless music files coming from my iMac. I’ve never investigated whether it’s possible to stream any other providers such as Spotify or Tidal as I’ve never failed to find any music I want to listen to on Amazon Music. With the ease of use voice activation gives I think it’s a worthy addition to anyone’s hifi setup.


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[AJSki2fly]

A great simple and cheap way into streaming, a good tip Steve.

[Pigmy Pony]

For the last couple of years I've been running an Echo Dot through a used Amptastic Mini-1 (£70) into a mint pair of Celestion 5s (£20) with decent results. Nice cheap second system, permanently switched on and used for anything from weather forecasts to Weather Report albums. This little set up is staying put :)

[steve-z]

For the last couple of years I've been running an Echo Dot through a used Amptastic Mini-1 (£70) into a mint pair of Celestion 5s (£20) with decent results. Nice cheap second system, permanently switched on and used for anything from weather forecasts to Weather Report albums. This little set up is staying put :)

Nice, very cheap and simple setup. I used an Amptastic Mini 1 in my second tier system for quite a while and found it excellent driving my QA Concept 20s but parted with it before the Echo arrived.


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[Pigmy Pony]

What I like about the Mini-1 is that it seems happy to be left on 24/7. Just adds to the convenience. An even simpler set up would be using the Dot with headphones, though I've not tried that.