Please can you help, I am trying to buy a replacement stereo for my home, but struggling to find the correct solution. I will try to provide you a quick brief of our current setup.

I live in a Victorian Semi detached home, which when purchased required major repair; this included the re-plastering of every room.
I took advantage of this fact & fitted 2 ceiling speakers (12” B&W) into the Downstairs front room 11’ x 13’ & also in the living room 11 x 13. I had the wires convene into an under the stairs cupboard.
I also routed the wires into the kitchen & upstairs into the Bathroom, however there are no speakers in these rooms as yet.

I have fitted a stereo solution under the stairs using an Amplifier, CD Deck, Mini Disk & Tuner, which access the speakers via. a Qed SS40 Four Way Speaker Switch.

This all works very well except each time I need to change CD or adjust volume I have to clamber to the back of an under stairs cupboard.

What I would like is perhaps a new Stereo System, Small in stature as our living room is only 11x13 which can communicate with the speaker system under the stairs.
I do use a lot of MP3 files & also have 4Mb Broadband perhaps these factors my affect you advice.

Perhaps a fancy colour LCD screen would be nice, but not really a necessity

Any help or direction would be very much appreciated....

There's a Philips product that will relay the infra red remote control to your stereo under the stairs. Costs £40 and works by Radio.

Alternatively, keep your music on a PC and use a Slimdevices Squeezebox or a Sonos.

I think I would like the IDEA of a music server perhaps with a vga output then I could fit a small touch screen monitor in the wall. BUt don't know which bit of kit to use?

I want to move all music from PC to this new device as hate PC's buzzing in background.

Gary

The Sonos is closest. No VGA output but the handset has an interface.

You can use NAS for the storage.

but will the handset work via. wireless or would I have to use the phillips gadget aswell?

I think it's Radio but you'd have to check the website

Thanks to your advice I have now ordered the SONOS, £760 has got me a 250Gig Nas Box, A wireless Colour LCD remote & a SONOS ZP80 Player which will connect to my HIFI.

I will keep your posted how I get on, should all be delivered Tomorrow morning (Saturday).

Thanks for all your help....

Gary

Basically, it's what I'm intending to buy myself but I'm doing the coding in to FLAC on the NAS first before I go for the front end.

So far I've got 1,200 albumns coded.

One thing that I have found out is that bigger disks incur more errors than smaller ones. Multiple smaller drives are best (250Gb is quite small these days).

Mmmm Flac you got me thinking now, can I convert MP3 to flac (what util do you use), or do I obtain FLAC format?

I use Yahoo music engine. I think you can download it for free. I convert them to CD using Nero if I need to (it needs a plugin) or Roxio Recordnow. The latter is flakier but more convenient.