Help my budding audiophile brother


Okay, so my brother picked up some kef qx5's yestrday based on a recommendation from me since I recently bought a pair myself and have really been enjoying them. He needs to get the rest of his gear as this is his only purchase for a dedicated two channel set-up thus far. We were looking at a used peachtree INova since it has a good dac and an i pod dock, and is an all in one piece and looks nice too. I'm wondering though if it's going to have enough oomph to power the kefs though and my other dilemma is that he'll want to listen to streaming music but he wants to be able to control what he's listening too from his listening chair. I can't figure out how to havd the i pod on the inova dock (in order to bypass the dac in the ipod and use the peachtree's dac) and still select your streaming music from the listening chair, from say, spotify.

Anyhow, we're open to any suggestions, and it doesn't have to be a peachtree. We'd like to keep the total cost between, say $1100-$1500. He likes clean looks. He does have an alienware laptop that could be incorporated also. He's going to want something with good power with a bit of "slam" in my oppinion. I was thinking peachtree because it was an all in one solution (dac, pre, amp, dock), it looks clean and he could add the peachtree 225 amp later to get more power and at that point, he'd still only have two components and they'd match and be aesthetically pleasing.

Thanks for your help with this one gang! I really want my brother to get back to enjoying music again and I think that a good rig will help him get back there!
:-)
128x128b_limo
My guess is that the Wadia is the better of the two, especially if you are getting the true digital signal from lossless files. Spotify Premium streams at 320 Kbps so there is some compromise on the quality. I've not had issues with the AppleTV2 but have noticed that it takes a few seconds upon power up to sound right. Also, volume control in the iPad or iPhone is not disabled, so be sure to turn them all the way up, controlling volume with your preamp only. Best of luck!
Lol, I'm doing alot of talking to myself on this thread; hopefully someone else will get something out of it later.

So I bought an apple tv to give it a try and see how it sounded in my set-up. In my application, it did not work. It was pretty jittery at certain times and it sounded pretty rough. I was running it through a parasound z dac. On the contrary though, my same i phone running on the same wireless signal running through the same parasound z dac, docked to a wadia sounds pretty dang good. I could see how some people might like the apple tv for certain applications, I'm just not one of them!
Hey, Allison2, do you know if it's the same quality as docking your phone on a wadia 170 and plugging the wadia into the dac? If so, why did I buy a Wadia?? Grrr....
So just to update the thread, my brother ended up getting (based on my recommendations) a Peachtree Nova Pre and a Peachtree 220 amp. He bought both pieces for $1800, which included shipping, from a gentleman named Burt at Seattle Hi Fi. I must say that Burt was extremely helpful and gave us a great deal. Thanks Burt!
If you've got an iphone or ipad, you can stream Spotify to an AppleTV ($99) into the DAC.
Apparently there is one for sale here for $975, not a bad price...

http://app.audiogon.com/listings/tube-peachtree-audio-inova-2013-03-15-integrateds-83702-boise-id

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The Peachtree iNova looks like a pretty sweet piece, has more than enough power (80 watts/ch.) to drive those KEFs to very satisfactory levels. I see that Peachtree has some re-furb units on sale for $1399. This looks like a good way to go...

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Just to add a little bit to my o.p. we are looking at peachtree nova 125's now and running it through sonos. What are your guys oppinions on the nova 125?