I wasted years listening to music on a smart speaker
I’ve spent a lot of time listening to music from a single smart speaker in my home office. While the sound quality is okay, there’s only so much a single speaker can do. I recently acquired a ten-year-old hi-fi system, and the difference is night and day.
I’ve always had smart speakers in my home office
For as long as I can remember, I’ve had smart speakers on my desk in my office. I have an Apple HomePod mini and an Echo Show 5 on the desk, and I use the HomePod mini for playing music, as the sound quality is significantly better than the Echo Show 5. The Echo Show 5 is mostly used for providing information, as I have it set up to display Home Assistant dashboards.
I listen to music a lot when I’m working, and I’ve never really thought that the sound quality from the HomePod mini was horrendous. I have far better speakers in other parts of the house, such as a Sonos One in the dining room, and stupidly, it never occurred to me that it would make more sense to have the highest-quality speaker in the room where I listen to music the most.
I inherited a ten-year-old micro hi-fi
Everything changed when my dad moved house recently. I was roped in to help him pack everything up for the move, and I came home with plenty of treasure. I picked up three old Samsung phones, two Amazon tablets, and two Kindles that my dad was no longer using. The jewel in the crown, however, was an old micro hi-fi system that my dad no longer needed.
The hi-fi is a Panasonic SA-PMX9DB. It’s a stereo system from 2013, with a total output power of 120W (RMS), which is pretty solid for a micro system. The two speakers have a three-way setup with a 14cm woofer, 2cm dome tweeter, and a 1.2cm super-tweeter. The system supports AirPlay, Bluetooth, and DLNA, has an “Apple-approved” USB port for connecting an iPad or USB stick, and shows its age by having an Apple Lightning dock on the top where you can shove a phone or iPod.
It’s a pretty decent system and would have cost around $400 when new. You can still find them for sale on eBay for around $100. I wouldn’t have considered buying one myself, but having been bequeathed it, there was no reason not to set it up in my home office.
Hooking it up to Music Assistant gave me access to local and streaming music
I use Music Assistant for streaming music throughout my home. It’s an add-on that’s designed to work with Home Assistant, and it comes with a number of benefits. You can add music from multiple sources, including streaming services such as Apple Music, Tidal, and Spotify, as well as local files. You can also add a wide variety of speakers to it, including AirPlay, Sonos, and most importantly in this case, DLNA.
I added DLNA as a player provider in Music Assistant, and powered up the hi-fi, which I connected via Ethernet. After tweaking a few settings, the system was recognized by Music Assistant and made available as a speaker. With the speakers positioned either side of my desk, I chose some music in Music Assistant and started to play it.
I’d forgotten how good true stereo can sound
As soon as the music started playing, I thought something was wrong. I was convinced that the music was coming from my laptop, which is directly in front of me on my desk. It really sounded as if the music was coming from the laptop’s speakers and not the stereo.
It was only when I confirmed that it definitely wasn’t the laptop by muting it completely that I realized that I was simply hearing music in true stereo for the first time in a long time. The leap in quality from my single small smart speaker really blew me away.
I quickly queued up some Beatles songs, as a lot of their music uses extreme stereo separation. Listening to A Day in the Life was stunning, with John Lennon’s vocals moving from one side of the stereo mix to the other throughout the opening verses, and the final piano chord fading out across the channels.
I’d honestly forgotten how good music in stereo could sound. Even with songs that didn’t use such extreme separation, the vastly superior sound quality of the hi-fi system made the music sound like I was listening to it again with fresh ears.
10 Reasons It’s Still Worth Buying a Hi-Fi System
The only way to do your music justice.
It was purely by chance that I ended up putting a stereo hi-fi system into my home office. It’s honestly one of the best improvements I’ve ever made to my working environment. Music has gone from something I’d have on in the background to something I can’t help but actively focus on. Even songs I’ve played to death sound brand new. I just wish I’d made the change sooner.
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