Help me buy things- win up to 100$!

[GeraldGiraffe]

If you're really into music you should look at getting some of the following things:

1. A Squeezebox - this is similar to a Slingbox but works for music. Essentially, you store all your music on a network drive, and the Squeezebox uses the wireless network to play said music through your sound system. http://www.slimdevices.com/ Squeezebox also has the advantage that it's easy to integrate with online radio stations and sites like Pandora.

2. Get a Valve Amplifier. Seriously. They don't have to be expensive, and while valves do burn out after ~10k hours of use, they're mostly very easy to replace - you can search for sellers on ebay and often there are huge amounts of very high quality military surplus valves going around. This site - http://www.iconaudio.co.uk/products.htm - should give you an idea of prices; they're in £s, so double them.

3. Speakers. Important, obviously. This site http://www.roadsters.com/speakers/#Intro has a listing of many high-end audio manufacturers and should be a good indication of the sort of thing you'd like to buy.

So get all those things, hook them up with your computer and wireless network and you can have an extremely high quality audio setup. These things don't have to be incredibly expensive either. Total cost for a decent valve amp and speaker system will be in the ~$4k range. Also, valve amplifiers look incredible and will without a doubt be the sexiest piece of hardware you can own.

Hope that helps with the high-quality music/ speakers part of your problem.

[LuckyMux]

Take a handful of your favourite LPs and/or CDs - and your iPod - to a decent hi-fi shop. They'll happily set various source/amp/speaker combos up for you in a listening room, including stuff that integrates with a PC (hi-fi has finally got used to music collections being on hard drives).

Everyone's ears and preferences are different and I cannot over-recommend an afternoon of testing. 'Proper' hi-fi shops practically insist on it.

Ultimately, if it sounds better, it is better. And yours is the only opinion that matters.

(This may be the start of an impossible - and expensive - obsession, you have been warned... [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] )

[Scansion]

I'm very impressed with what I am seeing so far. None worthy of a full hundred, but I've narrowed the 50$ winner to a few, and more people than I thought are worthy of 10$. If I don't find a few more awesome replies in the next couple hours I am going to give the winner 50$, second place 25$, and a bunch of people 10$. Here's what I am thinking so far:

Music: iPod/iTunes w/ AAC upped to 320kbps (ty Arp220), and a pair of Sennheiser's, not exactly which pair. Remember, links help me a lot, show me the exact product you reccomend. Gerald- more information on valve amplifiers please? I'm intrigued.

TV Tuner: Poker????, thank you for clearing up the fact that I cannot purchase a PCI tuner, this is helpful. This is probably my best bet: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815100022 but please let me know if you recomend something else over this one.

For DAW's Precise you seem pretty confident that Pro Tools is my best bet. Anyone care to challenge this notion? Is this the best option for recreational use?

Vista Ultimate- so far one of the only things I've learned is that the main difference is the security feature, which is good for poker among other things I'm assuming.

New mouse- seems like the consensus is the Logitech line. I've heard good things about razers but for now I think Logitech may be my best bet.

Speakers- my speaker setup is nonexistent, set aside a Klipsch iPod dock purchased about a year and a half ago. It's certainly a good product, but I am definitely looking for something bigger and better. Gerald, good suggestion with the Valve amplifier, again I am interested, but do not know much on the subject. Also, thanks for the link, but I do not really know where to start; upon opening it I am presented with a hundred or so links to speaker retailers. Suggestions in this respect again are needed.

So right now I'm thinking I am going to give one 50$ prize, a 25$ prize, and somewhere in the range of 5-10 10$ prizes.

[JSmith2007]

Well, I'll give a short little 'speech' on Vista Ultimate.

It's completely useless. No where near are 3/4 of the bugs even knowledged, let alone fixed, and is not much of an update from XP (Service Pack 2). The only better thing is that it improves security wise a little bit by having less internal crashes - that's the only fix security wise. Vista has the possibility to become a great OS, but right now Microsoft hasn't even began to implement alot of the features they could to make it worthwhile to upgrade with. The only good thing about Ultimate is that it includes all the other versions of Vista out right now (like 5 of them I think) so you do get a pretty good deal on that.

As said, Vista is pretty useless. I don't plan on upgrading for atleast a few months when they finally implement the stuff making it worthwhile to update.

There's my piece on Vista hehe.

[TruFeelings521]

If I am not mistaken, it seems as if Geralds speaker links are for cars and home use... I looked really quickly but there doesn't seem to be computer speakers on there.

[eckenz88476]

I'm big on gaming esp. fps' and you cant go wrong with a microsoft intellimouse 3.0 or a logitech mx518 as far as mice go. http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-B75-.../dp/B000GOUE7O

headphones id go with sennheiser HD 600s. http://www.sennheiserusa.com/newsite...transid=004465 you can find them cheaper off ebay or a different site but they are really worth it. they are durable ive had mine for years and they don't have a stratch.


and just a little extra luxury if you want a sweet mousepad which really helps with the accuracy and quickness of your mouse speed go to www.icemat.com

[TruFeelings521]

wow, none of my logitech links worked, here they are again

Speakers

MX Revolution
Wire Mouse 1

Wire Mouse 2

[JSmith2007]

My Altec Lansing Speakers here

Sorry, thought I posted the link before to these.

[raptor517]

if you want the best for music creation, go with cubase 4.

http://secure.keyfax.com/Merchant2/merch...mp;Store_Code=M

[Scansion]

[ QUOTE ]
wow, none of my logitech links worked, here they are again

Speakers

MX Revolution
Wire Mouse 1

Wire Mouse 2

[/ QUOTE ]

Thinking about these speakers, and the revolution and first cordless mouse shown are the ones I am debating as well. But I also like the MX Air, I may get that.