Components
With multiple listening rooms, our friendly staff is always willing to help you find the right combination of components for your system. If this requires comparing various products, not only are we equipped to do this – we love to do it!
Music on a hard drive has advantages from management and archival standpoint. The cool thing is that if it’s done right, it sounds fantastic! Our staff can show you how to get started in this area with product selections from SpeakerCraft or McIntosh.
When it comes to the heart of your component system, Hippo’s has great variety. We offer both separate components and integrated amps from Sony, Marantz, NAD, Rotel, and McIntosh. As always, we are happy to set up comparisons for you. It’s really amazing the difference you hear when you step up from an all in one receiver to separate components.
Listening to music is one of the most relaxing experiences in life. When your music system is right, it can ease away all of the stress of the day. We invite you let our experts help you create a system you will enjoy daily for many, many years to come!
Cables
Hippo’s carries audio and video cables from Audioquest. It’s very important to connect your audio and video components with high quality cables. Superior quality audio/video combinations interconnect for audiophiles and videophiles who demand maximum performance and flawless fidelity to the original signal.
Every cable acts as an antenna. With all the radio transmissions in the air, you don’t want the cable to become an antenna and introduce noise into your system. If you are running speaker cables a long distance, you also want to make sure you have a large enough gauge to carry the signal effectively. Connections at each end need to be tight and secure. We can demonstrate the difference a good cable can make in our showroom.
Nothing has shown the impact of cables more than the introduction of HDMI for video. We’ve had clients use an inexpensive HDMI cable brand for a long TV run and see all kinds of signal problems due to inferior construction and design. When the cable was replaced with a high quality HDMI cable, the problems disappeared and the picture looked better!
Another important thing to consider is the power coming into your home. Here, you need to be concerned about two points. First one is protecting your gear from external surge events. The second one is cleaning the power as it fluctuates in both voltage and signal noise. Hippo’s carries power products from Panamax/Fur. They will protect from sudden surges like lightning strikes or shorted power lines that can instantly destroy systems. There are units that incorporate UPS (uninterruptible power supply) technology so that a sudden loss of power doesn’t cause failure of projector lamps that need to cool down before they shut off and keep phone systems operating when the power goes off.
Power conditioning can make a big difference in performance if your power company supplies dirty power. This happens in metro areas or at the end of a run. Remember, all of your components are designed on test benches with great clean power. The power you get from your wall socket is almost certainly not as regulated or clean!