Help me find my Ultimate PC Setup!

Hello guys , I need some help! I'm planning on building a simple budget vintage Hi-fi setup that will be connected to a PC so that I'm able to access my whole music library. The PC will also be used for recording purposes (vocals, guitar, midi keyboard in the future) and also for headphone listening.

Here's what I have come up with so far:

Receiver: This is the only actual part that I already own. For the receiver, I will use a vintage mid-70s Kenwood KR-7400, 63wpc at 8ohms seems more than enough for my purposes. It works like new so I don't feel like this part needs upgrading, plus I dig the vintage setup.

---------------FREE

Speakers: For the speakers, I'm planning to buy a pair of Infinity Beta 20 bookshelf speakers (up to 150w but easy to drive). These speakers go for 150euros a pair in my country and used to retail for about 500-600 when they first came out in the 90s. I've only read great reviews for these so I'm pretty sure about these.

---------------180euros shipped

Audio Interface: I think that my best option here is the E-MU 0404. I'm pretty much a noob for all this audio thing but from what I can read from the specs it seems like I can pretty much do anything I want with this interface: connect up the PC to my receiver, I can record vocals or a guitar through it, it also has MIDI so I can connect a keyboard in the future and it seems like it would work well as a DAC for my headphones as well.

---------------200euros shipped

Mic: Shure SM57 seems like a good option. It's cheap and can work to record everything I need.

---------------100euros shipped

Headphones: I listen to mostly rock so here it's a toss up between the Grado SR80s and the Alessandro MS1. I'll take the best deal I guess.

---------------90euros shipped

So the whole setup totals up to about a little under 600 dollars. It seems like I got it all pretty well figured out but I just want to make sure that I'm making right choices and that's where I need your help, do you think I should think anything out? Got any suggestions for me?

That's pretty much it. I also plan on upgrading my PC to a 500euro machine with integrated graphics and one of the new Sandy Bridge Processors but that's not really my priority. I don't game on the pc so I don really need a GPU, as long as it can play 1080p, it's all good.

Sorry for the long thread, hopefully someone can help me!

Quote:

Originally Posted by JRG1990 

How do you plan on connecting E-MU 404 to the receiver? the E-MU doesn't have phono out.

Doesn't the E-MU have an analog output? I though I could just connect that to one of the channels of my receiver like the AUX for example. Again, I'm a noob at this, I don't know much about cables and maybe I'm confused about something.