Having moved just over 4 years ago to sunny Torquay, and the wife insisted that my beloved Kavent/ Usher system would not fit in the cottage, and having bought a Naim Muso to 'take its place?' and having used a Panasonic mini system which sounds amazingly good, I have just dipped my toes back into the water , with what I would term a modest, even beginners set up.
I bought a pair of Wharfedale Pacific Pi10's for my son, obviously wanting to test them for him before sending them up to Nottingham, I did, and long story short, he didn't get them, I decided my need was greater than his, so I sent him one of my three Panasonic mini's which he is more than pleased with.
So I hooked the Pacific's up to the Panny, which has a reasonably good 60 watts RMS pr channel, except it is only that into a 3 ohm speaker, which it's matching speakers are, but the Wharfedale's are 6 ohms, so it started me thinking that I really ought to have an amp that was a bit more compatible, and started trawling the classifieds for something that was, by comparison to previous systems, 'as cheap as chips'
There were lots around but a lot of people confuse 'vintage' with old and knackered'
I narrowed my choices down, and decided on a Marantz PM44 SE in mint condition.
I noticed that it was a bit of a drive away, so I did a bit of haggling to help cover the distance involved, and I was very fair only asking for my offer to be considered if after a few weeks it was not sold at asking price.
My offer was accepted so I put the address into Google maps where magically the distance suddenly upped from 41 miles to 63!
No problem as in the past I've driven from Nottingham to Cambridge, London, and Oxford for previous bits of Hifi, don't we all?
Anyway, I had been having issues when I was streaming with hiccups, glitches and stoppages in music.
Like an idiot it hadn't dawned on me that this started when I traded my iPad for one with a larger capacity, and I went around the houses buying things like an AudioCast WiFi streamer, and ultimately a Sonos Connect S1.
Anyway, iPad swapped again, and no further problems encountered, I now posses a very modest little set up comprising of the Marantz and Wharfedale stuff already mentioned, utilising the Sonos and my old REL Quake , and I'm enjoying my music all over again !
Just the one problem, it's started me down the slippery slope to 'Swap-itis' all over again!