Need system for a newby music lover

Hi, all! I’m a newby music lover and need not very expensive system for beginning (but not poor quality).

What you can suggest? p.s. My budget is 1000-1200 y.e. and I don’t want to waste this amount for poor sound.

Thanks!

An obvious place to start would be a Sprout ($800)! Click here. This cool little integrated amp has a lot of functionality and very good sound quality for the price. Add a pair of headphones or speakers, of which there are many good ones in the $300-500 range. You could play music via Bluetooth from your phone or tablet for a while, and then add a better digital source or a turntable later when you can. Look under the Reviews tab on the page linked above for all kinds of comments about Sprout. I bought one for my nephew, a professional jazz pianist, and he loves it.

An inexpensive, but excellent, speaker option is the Pioneer SP-BS22-LR. A pair is less than $130 USD.

If you are a headphone type, the Sennheiser Momentum over ear headphones are a wonderful buy at around $170 USD.

Either, or both, with a Sprout would provide tremendous musical enjoyment.

Elk said An inexpensive, but excellent, speaker option is the Pioneer SP-BS22-LR. A pair is less than $130 USD.

If you are a headphone type, the Sennheiser Momentum over ear headphones are a wonderful buy at around $170 USD.

Either, or both, with a Sprout would provide tremendous musical enjoyment.

Elk, thanks for the speaker notation. Later, I'm looking to put in room by room music and some cheaper speakers will be the way forward.

Elk, Do you have any opinion on the PSB M4U 2 headphones.

Also, SpyMax, I have a Sprout, and suspect it would be excellent with a set of tidy bookshelf speakers.

The PSB M4U 2 are excellent noise cancelling headphones, with much better sound than similar headphones such as the Bose. (The Bose headphones have superb noise cancelling, but the sound quality is lacking). I almost bought a pair of the PSBs for traveling (I fly a good amount), but came across a pair of nice noise cancelling Sony’s for far less money on closeout.

I strongly suggest however avoiding noise cancelling 'phones unless you need this feature. There are many much better sounding options. But if you fly, commute on a train, etc. they are a wonderful invention.

Do try out the Pioneer SP-BS22-LR speakers. They are astounding for the money. Really.

Elk said The PSB M4U 2 are excellent noise cancelling headphones, with much better sound than similar headphones such as the Bose. (The Bose headphones have superb noise cancelling, but the sound quality is lacking). I almost bought a pair of the PSBs for traveling (I fly a good amount), but came across a pair of nice noise cancelling Sony's for far less money on closeout.

I strongly suggest however avoiding noise cancelling 'phones unless you need this feature. There are many much better sounding options. But if you fly, commute on a train, etc. they are a wonderful invention.

Do try out the Pioneer SP-BS22-LR speakers. They are astounding for the money. Really.

Just listened to the PSB M4U 2's (first time). They're quite enjoyable and approx US$265 ex 10% taxes, which is o.k. pricing. I suspect they'll update the M4U 2's to have a similar design to the new M4U 1's (in ear, with separate armature for bass driver).

So the tip for Sennheiser Momentum tip is excellent. I’ve tracked down a pair for about US$100 ex-taxes, so cannot go wrong starting there. Will verify and pick these up and let the rest work itself out later on. Don’t need the noise cancelling until I start travelling again, which is at least months away.

Will track down the Pioneer’s later. If I’ve got some decent bookshelf speakers, the Sprout will be perfect, before sorting Multi-room solution later. Sprout + monitor-like floorstanders is a bit much bass bloom for my personal taste.

The Bluesound approach to multi-room looked like it might be expensive, whereas numerous sets of those will be much better, and better coverage.

There’s some cheap enough Sonos going second hand, but figured this might be “last generation” gear. For the price AU$350 for a connect + another node and another $80 for a controller, it seemed o.k… not convinced, however… ignorance on multi-room being part of the problem…

Now, just need that PS Audio multi-room audio solution (wasn’t there a post about PCI-e based FPGA cards somewhere… with Bridge processing and output to local D/A converter … which might be Raspberry Pi supported processing; DS for Hi-Fi; PCI-e for digitally distributed multi-room, all these being nodes in a Tidal driven Roon-based setup… ) PS Audio definitely has all the IP / non-commodity technology pieces … who cares about a bit of PCI-e based noise for multi-room, having a solution at all would be awesome… I’m sure it’s as easy as typing a paragraph of text, after too much coffee, surely…