How I built a real Hi-Fi audio system for 125 thousand rubles

Why Hi-Fi?

The concept of “Hi-Fi” is quite standardized: half a century ago, German engineers determined specific minimum technical requirements for sound reproduction equipment that Hi-Fi equipment manufacturers try to adhere to to this day. They are all formulated to achieve one goal: to eliminate the influence of the equipment itself on the quality of sound reproduction. If these technical requirements are met, even the cheapest Hi-Fi equipment should produce at least 80% of the sound correspondence to the original source. And this is the level of “sufficiency” of sound below which I simply cannot listen to music.

Amplifier

Initially, I only had Danish DALI Zensor 1 speakers and a computer. Since these are passive speakers, it is clear that a device that would amplify the signal must be inserted between them. If I am aiming for the quality of the Hi-Fi system, then the device must be appropriate. At the same time, it is necessary to remember the golden rule of proportionality when assembling any systems: the speed of the squadron is determined by the slowest ship. In the case of an audio system, this is the sound quality. It is determined by the weakest audio link. The speakers already met both Hi-Fi standards and my requirements. The computer – clearly the weakest link in the audio setup – met the requirements of the main work.

Let me say right away that no matter how old-school audiophiles wrinkle their noses when they argue about the advantages of vinyl, tube amplifiers and acoustics, now even for music lovers the main source of sound is often the Network + PC bundle. Especially if you consider that vinyl and tube amplifiers can weigh, cost and take up space as a small cast-iron bridge.

As a sound amplification device, you can consider two options: a receiver or a stereo amplifier. Which is better? At a comparable cost, the receiver is more functional: it has a built-in FM receiver, it can process signals of different formats from various sources, usually at least five in number – digital (HDMI, optical and coaxial inputs, sometimes even an Ethernet input) and analog, some have a built-in phono preamplifier for players. The receiver is equipped with various decoders and a digital audio processor (DSP). However, this versatility and excess of unnecessary electronics is its main problem: many simultaneously operating devices in a small volume and powered by one power supply create a fairly strong electromagnetic background. And this, in turn, leads to interference and “crosstalk” for the analog path. In simple words, the signal in the receiver is distorted to a greater extent on the way from the source to the speaker system than in a “clean” amplifier.

The receiver's sound is more suitable as an accompaniment to the visual picture of a home theater, for “surround sound”, but not for high-quality listening to music, which still, as a rule, has a stereo format. And most importantly, I personally am going to listen to music in good old stereo mode from one source – a computer. Why do I need all these excesses, in the form of seven-channel sound, decoders, a built-in tuner, etc., which only worsen the sound, increase the price and complexity of the device and, accordingly, reduce its reliability.

My choice is a classic stereo amplifier, commonly known as an “amp”, which, according to old-school audiophiles, is the only one capable of producing decent sound, close to their favorite “tube”. It has several analog inputs for switching sources and nothing more. Going into a little more detail, I will say that there are different classes of amplifiers: A, B, AB, H, G and D. You can read more about the differences on the Internet or consult with sellers in audio equipment stores. In essence, there are two main types of amplifiers.

1. Class AB is a classic analog amplifier that does not digitize the analog stereo signal, but simply amplifies it and transmits it to the speakers. Class AB amplifiers are still the most popular in Hi-Fi equipment.

2. D-class – such an amplifier digitizes the analog signal, processes it internally, then converts it back to analog and outputs the sound to the device.

Following the rule of proportionality, all components in an audio system should be in approximately the same price category. There is no point in buying an amplifier for 100 thousand rubles for speakers worth 30 thousand rubles – that's about how much my DALI Zensor 1 cost at the end of 2023. Therefore, I decided that the missing components of the designed audio system should be in this price range. To rise to a qualitatively higher level of sound, you need to be prepared for significant expenses: the prices of even household audio equipment tend to infinity with increasing quality.

Any audiophile will tell you that the best way to choose equipment is to go to a specialized store and choose the equipment directly on the spot by listening to and comparing models from different manufacturers, since the emotional perception of sound is individual for each person. There is no concept of “this is good and this is bad.” But, unfortunately, due to lack of time and, most likely, laziness, I did not go anywhere and made my choice based on reviews of various bloggers and magazine ratings. In the end, I settled on the British amplifier Cambridge AXA35. I connected it to the computer and felt that the sound did not meet expectations. From the very beginning, I understood that the weak link in the entire audio system would be the PC, but after connecting a good amplifier and speakers to the standard audio output of the computer, I was convinced how sad everything was. So there was a need to buy a digital-to-analog converter (DAC).

Digital to analog converter

What is a DAC? It functions as an external sound card: it receives a digital signal from a PC and converts it into an analog signal, which is transmitted to the speakers via an amplifier. Hardware decoders used in DACs provide better quality conversion of a digital signal into an analog signal compared to built-in PC sound cards. Software sound processing can be quite good, but still cannot achieve the same level of quality. This difference can be easily heard, as I have personally experienced.

For my setup, I chose the English DAC iFi Audio ZEN DAC V2. This device was in the top Hi-Fi ratings and matched my budget – only 12 thousand rubles.

Then the question arose of what to play the media content with. Most software players digitally process the sound, which negatively affects the output audio signal, and I wanted the DAC to do the decoding and the files to get to it in their original form. For such cases, Windows has the ASIO and WASAPI transfer protocols, and, of course, the most popular player that supports all possible formats – foobar2000. But it has one drawback that has always put me off – a boring interface.

Roon

Thanks to blogs, forums and communication in audiophile circles, I learned about the existence of the Roon program. It has two key advantages over other media players. First, it bypasses all internal computer processing and directly transfers the digital file to the DAC without doing anything with it. The difference in sound quality between Roon and regular media players, for example, AIMP (although AIMP is my favorite player for Windows), is very noticeable. Second, Roon aggregates files on the computer's hard drive and creates a convenient audio library, like on streaming services – with beautiful covers, information about artists, etc. If I had bought the official Roon, it would have been able to pull all this information from the server, but I had to configure everything manually, because I installed a “broken” one, downloaded from a well-known torrent tracker. The reason is simple – Roon is a very expensive program: a lifetime copy costs $ 500, a monthly subscription – more than 2,000 rubles. This is provided that you have a foreign payment method (it is impossible to pay for a software license with a Russian card).

Roon can also be used as a streaming service. It directly supports, for example, Tidal and Qobuz: you enter your account login and password, and the program transfers files bit by bit from the server to the DAC without any processing. But I repeat, I don’t have this option, since my Roon is cut off from the outside world. But thanks to fans of digitalization, who post their music collections on torrents, I listen to digital copies of rare records and master recordings. For example, I couldn’t find complete discographies of Matia Bazar, Supermax or Dschinghis Khan on any streaming service.

Another feature of Roon is its multi-room capability. If there are several Roon-compatible devices in an apartment and they are on the same Wi-Fi network, Roon can transmit a signal to all devices simultaneously or orchestrate different audio tracks between devices: play one in the living room, another in the bedroom, and a third in the kitchen.

Subwoofer

When it seemed that the Hi-Fi setup was assembled, I realized that my speakers lacked low frequencies – bass. A subwoofer solves this problem. Initially, I wanted to buy an English REL, but a new one at that time cost 60 thousand rubles. Therefore, I bought Bowers & Wilkins 608 “second-hand” for 36 thousand.

Choosing a subwoofer is a separate task, as they are divided into subwoofers for cinema (or games) and for music. Subwoofers for cinema create a booming bass, which is good for explosions, roaring engines, etc., while subwoofers for music – a faster bass to accurately convey drums and bass guitar. This reduces the volume of the bass, but improves the sound quality, which in this case is incomparably more important. After testing, I was convinced of the correctness of my choice, since this subwoofer perfectly complemented my Hi-Fi setup, providing the necessary low frequencies.

Streamer

So, I figured out the sound quality: Roon sends the audio file bit by bit to the DAC without processing it in any way, the DAC correctly converts the “digital” into an analog signal, a very good class AB amplifier amplifies it and transmits it to the speakers.

As you probably understood, the main source of my music is digital media from my PC and streaming. Roon plays albums downloaded from the Internet, and at that time I used Tidal as a streaming service. Tidal was great – a large library, excellent quality of phonograms, but it has one big minus for Russia – you can only listen to it through a VPN. At the beginning of the article, I wrote that this audio setup was assembled at my home workplace, and it turned out that listening to Tidal through a VPN makes it inconvenient for me to work and surf the Internet. Because of this inconvenience, the idea was born to play files from streaming services, and from a PC, with an external player (streamer).

Having immersed myself in the Internet, having read and listened to a bunch of reviews, I settled on the same manufacturer as my DAC, the iFi company and its Zen Stream v2 streamer costing 30 thousand rubles. Actually, the decision was obvious and logical – to take a DAC and a streamer from the same manufacturer.

The selected streamer met all my requirements: it supported Roon and was Roon Ready certified, could play albums from the main streaming services: Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify, and sent the received signal via USB to the DAC without any processing.

The setup that was built had another nice feature – all music control was done from the phone. A mobile application from Roon is installed on the phone, which sees the program running on the PC and controls it.

As for Tidal, thanks to Tidal Connect technology, my streamer is also controlled from my phone. The Tidal mobile app has a button for selecting a playback device. This could be the phone itself, a Bluetooth device, or any device that supports Tidal Connect technology (located in the same Wi-Fi network as the phone). The main feature of this technology is that information from the streaming service is transmitted to the streamer not from the phone – the phone in this situation only acts as a remote control. The streamer itself goes to the service, takes files from there, and transfers them to the DAC for decoding. I would like to note that Spotify works the same way.

After adding the streamer to my setup, I configured the router to access Tidal via VPN for the purchased streamer, and the PC accesses the network in the usual direct way.

So I finally put together a budget Hi-Fi system that plays the way I like it.

Which streaming service should I use to listen to Hi-Fi?

When I was creating my Hi-Fi setup, I initially planned to listen to music via Tidal, which is the most famous streaming service offering Hi-Res music. Tidal uses the MQA codec, which provides high-quality digital master recordings. This is partly why I chose a DAC from iFi, which supports the Tidal Connect system and MQA decoding. However, Tidal has never been officially available in Russia. Now you can only listen to it via VPN. This is very inconvenient due to the unstable connection.

I tried switching to Spotify by subscribing to a Turkish account. But the sound quality of Spotify, which uses a 320 kbps stream, is noticeably inferior to Tidal. The difference in sound quality is obvious when switching between streams. Then I decided to try the French service Qobuz, which also offers Hi-Res music. However, my devices did not support Qobuz directly.

On the iFi website, I read that my streamer is compatible with the Audirvana player, an analogue of Apple's Roon. Audirvana supports a Qobuz subscription, but the subscriptions cost 700 rubles for Audirvana and 600 rubles for Qobuz, a total of 1,300 rubles per month. I thought: “I'm an audiophile. I need good quality.” I went to register, and it turned out that Audirvana does not accept my Belarusian card, and Qobuz does not register via VPN. It says: “You are using a VPN connection. Log in from your country.” Buying a subscription through Avito turned out to be even more expensive.

So what I ended up doing is using Roon for high-quality music at home and Spotify when I'm out and about. Hopefully Spotify will soon launch support for Hi-Fi audio, which will solve my audio problems completely.

How much does my personal setup cost

In total, my Hi-Fi audio system cost 125 thousand rubles. I sometimes attend audiophile gatherings in the center of Moscow, organized by audio equipment stores, where you can listen to equipment for tens of thousands of dollars. As you understand, it sounds simply magnificent! But, returning home and turning on my home setup, which is very budget by audiophile standards, I do not hear a gap in the sound.

How much does it cost? Recommendations

First, of course, decide on a budget: how much money are you willing to spend. Do you already have any components or are you starting from scratch? I will repeat the main rule of assembling an audio system: it makes sense to buy all the equipment in approximately the same price category. And the amplifier, and the speakers, and the sub, and the streamer – everything should cost approximately the same money. If you already have an amplifier for 30 thousand rubles, there is no point in buying speakers for it for 150 thousand – the “amplifier” simply will not be able to “pump up” them, to give the level of signal quality at which they will reveal their maximum. If you want more – sell the “weak links” and distribute the amount between the system components approximately equally.

The best thing to do is to go to a store and listen to everything in person. In my experience, the main stores selling Hi-Fi equipment employ people who are well versed in the subject. Talk, ask questions, but the main criterion is your perception of the sound. Don't be confused by big brands. You don't have to focus on them. What you like is your Hi-Fi. As for saving, after choosing equipment in a store, you don't have to buy it there. Everything, even new (not just used), can be bought on Avito for reasonable money. True, the question of the supplier's warranty and reliability arises here, but in this matter everyone makes their own decision.