The discussion around CDs has been interesting as I've just now got the opportunity of getting a proper hifi set up at home. I still own and regularly buy CDs because it's an economical way to get reasonably decent sound quality recordings. Up until recently I tend rip them as FLAC files and listen on a portable player. In terms of hifi system I take it from the discussion most would consider a CD player redundant and that I should just rip everything to a device of some kind. As someone with extremely basic knowledge my question would be what would be a decent set up to start out? An amp, some speakers and a some basic USB type thing plugged into the amp?
Yes. You could raid Dazza's thread for some decent speakers and an amp.
After that, you need somewhere to store your files and something to play them. There are a great many different ways of doing this. I use a NAS to store and a laptop and DAC to play.
The discussion around CDs has been interesting as I've just now got the opportunity of getting a proper hifi set up at home. I still own and regularly buy CDs because it's an economical way to get reasonably decent sound quality recordings. Up until recently I tend rip them as FLAC files and listen on a portable player. In terms of hifi system I take it from the discussion most would consider a CD player redundant and that I should just rip everything to a device of some kind. As someone with extremely basic knowledge my question would be what would be a decent set up to start out? An amp, some speakers and a some basic USB type thing plugged into the amp?