The Perfect Stereo
Friday, December 29, 2006

My specifications for the perfect stereo have not nearly been matched by any company. Just buying one with bluetooth and USB plug and play will set me back £280. Thus I have set a task for myself: to build my own. This may take 5 years going by my track record but I see it as a feasible effort. So, what are my aims for this ultimate stereo system?

At the moment I use my PC for all of my music, whether it be listening to last.fm stations or mp3s via the highly flexible and brilliant foobar2000. I don't like having to have my pc on to listen to music, especially as it has a tendency to make fan noise, consume power and all the other failings of my four year old PC (which is standing up remarkably well).

Functions I want:

• Wireless connectivity to play internet, last.fm stations and send playback statistics to the last.fm service.
  
• Wireless or bluetooth connectivity to quickly sync' newly downloaded files from PC to the stereo's harddrive.
• USB Plug and play for mp3 players, etc, built in ipod dock
  
• Bluetooth connectivity to transfer files to my phone and other devices
  
• DAB Digital Radio Tuner, Short range FM output
  
• DVD-Audio, MP3-CD, CD playback and DVD/CD burning capabilities (preferably tray-less for sexiness).
  
• MP3, FLAC, WAV, OGG, M4A, AC3, WMA, etc.
  
• A bluetooth remote (possibly using Wii controller)
• Tape deck (yeah I still love that analogue fix)
• Recording functions
  
• LCD colour display that shows album art, artist image, now playing information and playlist info - essentially what my foobar shows (that's the costly bit and touch screen is only a dream), spectrum analyser.
  
• 5.1 surround sound compatibility, Bass and Treble control
• 100 GB HDD internal and support for external HDDs
• Phono and digital audio, headphone jack and microphone plugs
• Ideally all running using Foobar2000, but that needs windows et al.
  

I have a multitude of speakers ready for use, so the system will be designed to work around them.

I am not asking much of myself.

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