Newbie, where do I start? I have been gifted some JBL HS610
Newbie, where do I start? I have been gifted some JBL HS610
I know they are passive, but what are some good brands or receivers that I could use with an Audio Technica LP120 turntable?
Also, does the type of speaker wire I use matter too?
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Speaker wire only matters in terms of getting a thick enough gauge of wire so that the signal can be transmitted without degradation/interference. There aren’t different types of wire with different sound qualities and hyper expensive fancy wires with higher fidelity or any number of other audiophile traps here, though people may try to convince you otherwise.
Unless you are running speaker wire 20+ feet to each speaker 16 gauge wire works fine though you can get away with 18 or 20 most of the time.
If your speakers were 4ohm they require more juice to power so you want to go a bit thicker to 14 or 12 but I believe your jbl hs610 are 8ohm.
This article is really helpful https://www.crutchfield.com/S-mfBm9vibh9V/learn/learningcenter/home/speakers_wire.html
edit nope see this nonsense, crutchfield gives some decent advice and then swerves off the cliff into pseudo-science territory with talking about special high quality speaker cables that make the music sound “more alive”.
Lol nope, trust me if electricity worked like that a whole lot of industries with a whole lot more monetary interest in knowing how electricity worked would have spent a massive amount of money and time figuring this out. It is a nothingburger you could hack apart practically any old insulated copper wire of a high enough gauge and use it as a speaker cable if you wanted to.
What are good budget receivers to get? Thanks for explaining the wire thing! It def makes sense :-)
I have listened to a lot of nice audio setups, I have spent a lot of time producing and mixing music. I am going to ruffle some feathers here but in my opinion only really two things matter here.
One, record players aren’t the most common input to a receiver anymore so you need to make sure you buy a receiver that is reviewed to have a decent phono input (for record player). It doesn’t need to be super expensive or fancy, the hardware maker just needs to have prioritized that in the product.
Two, the receiver needs to be powerful enough to provide clean power to your speakers. Now again with audiophile stuff people will go and on and on about what kind of preamps or receivers to get because they all have different sounds and tones and I know people want their hobby to have a fancy high end with exclusive luxury items that are superior to budget stuff… but I have seen zero scientific evidence of this (and have never heard a difference).
Maybe 40 years ago there were good preamps and bad preamps in terms of sound quality, but nowadays all that really matters is how much power that preamp has to amplify the signal. Preamps for efficient speakers (like yours) are a solved problem and can just be cranked out of a factory somewhere in Asia no problem 24/7. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the actual hardware in many different brands of audiophile preamps are under the hood actually just the same damn chips you would find in a cheaper product just branded differently. Your speakers are 8ohm bookshelf speakers so you don’t need a massive amount of power, pretty much any receiver will work wonderfully.
In terms of specific models receivers I always buy them used because I am broke and the used market depending on where you live can be full of em. A lot comes down to what kind of connections you want these days. Do you want Spotify on your receiver? Do you want your phone to be able to connect wirelessly?
Brands I particularly like for receivers - marantz, onkyo
Sorry the model names of receivers is a mess of numbers and acronyms and the names are always shifting so I don’t off the top of my head have specific current/new model names I can give you for brand new receivers to get. I will give you a cheap, used secondhand market recommendation though…
For many years I had an Onkyo Tx-8211 from the 90s? that I took from my parents who bought it years ago and didn’t have a stereo system anymore. I listened to all kinds of speakers with it, 4ohm and 8ohm, all kinds of setups and spaces. It sounded great! It can be had for probably easily under $100 used and many people recommend the Onkyo Tx-8211 as a simple, affordable (doesn’t have audiophile branding like other “vintage” brands/eras do) and very high quality receiver with a good phono/record player input.
Check out reviews, they range over decades and they are all really positive.
http://www.audioreview.com/product/amplification/receivers/onkyo/tx-8211.html
Check out this thread detailing some of Onkyo’s other receiver models from a similar time period and you can pick one up for very cheap on the used market likely. Most (if not all?) of these Onkyo’s had decent phono stages too.
https://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/the-onkyo-tx-8xx-series.379243/
I know this might feel like a weird suggestion and no judgement if you want to buy a brand new audiophile branded receiver that is exactly the thing you want for a big chunko change but there is a whole galaxy of these old 90s and 2000s stereo receivers floating around for peanuts on the used market if you have the time to figure out model names and google them with “audiokarma” or “review” added to see if anyone has said anything about them.
Thanks for such an extensive list. I am picking up one here after watching some reviews on youtube.
I have an Audio Technica 120 LP turntable so I know that will be perfect. Paired with my JBL HS610 I think it will be great sound.
I also might just get a RCA to 3.5mm jack for my laptop which will sit near it for Spotify. I know there is probably some "quality bottlenecks" in this system with my setup, but it will beat any bluetooth speaker I have so thank you so much!
I also might just get a RCA to 3.5mm jack for my laptop which will sit near it for Spotify.
Definitely do that, your computer is a super easy way to access all the music in the whole world!
Do buy a beefy, thicker 3.5mm to RCA cable if you can just because the amount of times one of the thin ones I have had started to break and got super touchy with how they had to be plugged in to the 3.5mm jack justtttt right to work and not make a horrible hum.. is too many. A thicker one isn’t much more expensive and will save you many headaches. It isn’t a sound quality thing, it’s that the cheap thin ones often just aren’t insulated thickly enough or they break from bending way too easy.