istereos.co.uk was founded by John McMahon, a hi-fi specialist with a huge appetite and passion for music and music reproduction. Hi-fi became a clear career choice, once he discovered the true meaning of high fidelity. Before this hi-fi was merely a word used to describe any stereo device capable of noise. John wanted to share this all encompassing passion with fellow music enthusiasts, so they too could experience recorded music in song, with rich harmonics, depth, timing and scale. During his 2 decades retailing British, European & American high fidelity, he has seen a number of music-carriers (LP, cd, cassette, mini-disc, dcc, sacd, dvda, etc.) come and go. Colleagues have mourned and still are mourning the parting of their favourite carrier, but carriers are a means to an end - music. John decided early in his career not to support a particular carrier, but rather to sell equipment which play the carrier supported by the recording industry. No point supplying equipment for which there isn’t ready music and its music and supplying musical systems which are important.

We have a new music carrier once again and it’s downloads, meaning computers are necessary. This time the older mediums have been incorporated into the change. This is good news for supporters & collectors of cds & Lps because these too can be downloaded and played without compromise, interruption and fuss. Demand for quality has also resulted in hi-res downloads (24/96 or studio quality material) which is very good news for music reproduction because for the first time since the LP (sacd & dvda did not catch on), audio quality has improved. istereos.co.uk is one of the first UK retailers to specialise in computer based stereo systems. Here is some information which may help you when designing your system. These systems can be incorporated into a cinema system so that your main speakers aren’t duplicated. Cinema amps (dolby digital) are designed for effect and cannot (unless your budget extends well into 5 figures) reproduce music as mentioned previously.

The Source: Some say the most important component. In this case the source is your Mac or PC. A computer is a fantastic device to store music on. It reads digital information accurately and it’s more precise than a cd player, however due to its extremely dirty power-supply and inhospitable environment for a sound-card, its not a good medium to process music with (convert digital information to analogue). We can bypass the negative and to do so we need to use a usb or firewire digital convertor (see MultiMedia in the Product category for Bel Canto, Halide, Wavelength.). These products have been designed to galvanically isolate the computers power-supply and to by-pass the sound-card so the computer becomes nothing more than a digital music storage device - an active cd with enormous storage potential if you will. All digital to analogue conversion will be processed by the stereo system just like in a cd player. It’s more than a cd player though, because a 24/96 usb digital convertor can play Hi-resolution downloads (superior to cd & similar to dvda). These convertors are superior to the usb inputs found on most audio components and all music, whether its compressed MP3 or uncompressed cd, will sound remarkably better. Mac users can take it a step further with Amarra software. Amarra software works with iTunes and can playback 24/96/high resolution music. It by-passes iTunes inferior codecs for improved music with uncompressed & loss-less files. The result is a more musical experience which is simply music in time. Sounds bizarre but with Amarra you’ll discover musicians in tune with each other. We do not recommend connecting a computer to your stereo via the headphone jack or optical connectors as these make use of the sound-card. If you prefer keeping your main computer separate from your stereo, we suggest a dedicated mac (mini mac, iMac, MacBook), usbdac and Amarra. You’ll not only have your entire music collection at your finger tips, together with (almost)every radio station in the world, but the music will sound better and it’s cheaper than an equivalent cd-player.