Vintage HI Fi. Anyone else in to it?

[Drago]

Im a Presonus fan for that sort of use.

 

[captain nemo1701]

Mine is 13 years old, must be vintage by now the way tech advances these days!

 

[raleighnut]

Mine is 13 years old, must be vintage by now the way tech advances these days!

Yet QUAD have just re-launched their 33/303 pre- power combo following their successful relaunch of the 22/QUAD 2* valve combo some years back........................Retro is the new tech.

*Available in 3 flavours, the Quad 2 'Classic' with 18 watts of KT 66 in each Mono valve amp, the QUAD 2 40 with 40 watts by driving the KT 66 valves a little harder and the QUAD 2 80 using KT 88 valves to give (you guessed it) 80 watts from each Poweramp.

 

[Dadam]

Music lovers use their equipment to listen to music.
Audiophiles use music to listen to their equipment.

 

[FishFright]

Music lovers use their equipment to listen to music.
Audiophiles use music to listen to their equipment.

Cyclists ride on the road to slow traffic.


Like the above -- Incorrect, imflamatory but gets attention .

 

[Dadam]

Cyclists ride on the road to slow traffic.

Like the above -- Incorrect, imflamatory but gets attention .

Triggered much?

It's not incorrect though. It's nail on head accurate for a significant subset of those mentioned.

 

[Dadam]

I've long held a latent hankering for a small separates setup with 80s Japanese gear, the kind I couldn't afford back then. Best I could do was a Sony midi system with no CD. This hankering is not helped by watching a load of videos from https://www.youtube.com/@Techmoan

We don't really have the space though, and we live in a small semi next to a lovely old lady in her 80s so high volume isn't on the cards. Headphones of course are an option, and I have a pair of criminally under-used HD560s that I need to blow the dust off, after I find something appropriate to drive them.

 

[Drago]

Mine is 13 years old, must be vintage by now the way tech advances these days!

My Technics/Kenwood system is 40 and I've updated it by plugging my Echo Dot into one of the spare channels on the amp.

 

[FishFright]

Triggered much?

It's not incorrect though. It's nail on head accurate for a significant subset of those mentioned.

The thing is of the audiophiles I know many are ex professional musicians , almost all classical players. It's the passion for the music that drives the love of hifi and not the other way around.

Sadly, as in any other hobby, there are always those are driven by the prestige of the price tag rather than the joy of music. Watch collecting's public image suffers badly from these kind of buyers too.

 

[raleighnut]

The thing is of the audiophiles I know many are ex professional musicians , almost all classical players. It's the passion for the music that drives the love of hifi and not the other way around.

Sadly, as in any other hobby, there are always those are driven by the prestige of the price tag rather than the joy of music. Watch collecting's public image suffers badly from these kind of buyers too.

Yep, the bloke I bought my QUAD from in the late 80's had a grand piano in his lounge, so why was he selling this amp. Well he also had a pair of 6 foot high speakers (Tannoy I seem to remember) driven by a pair of 100 watt Radford valve amps (It was a very large lounge)

Peter Walker (the guy who started QUAD) was also a semi pro musician who played Clarinet in a Jazz band and started off making public address systems as ' The Acoustical Manufacturing Company' and the name QUAD is an acronym for his first home music system which was Quality Unit Amplifier Domestic just after the second world war.

 

[Profpointy]

The thing is of the audiophiles I know many are ex professional musicians , almost all classical players. It's the passion for the music that drives the love of hifi and not the other way around.

Sadly, as in any other hobby, there are always those are driven by the prestige of the price tag rather than the joy of music. Watch collecting's public image suffers badly from these kind of buyers too.

A pal of mine worked for a hi fi magazine at one point. The magazine covered reasonably accessible kit and didn't go in for exotica or osmium cables and the like. Anyhow they did one article where they talked to some professional musicians and helped them select new mid range hi fi. There was
a classical musician, a jazz guy and a rock musician. My pal, who was just the photographer rather than the journalist or hi fi expert, found it really interesting that none of the musicians had anything approaching a hi fi level of equipment, but they could all easily hear the difference. Seemingly they'd been able to kind-of listen-through the deficiencies of the equipment to appreciate the actual music and the flaws didn't really bother them. They did all agree that the new kit they ended up with was decidedly better and had been able to easily hear differences between items the during the selection process

 

[derrick]

As long as you like the sound, that is all that matters, i don't think we all hear exactiy the same sounds.

 

[raleighnut]

QUAD once set up a 'blind' testing session between their Valve amp, the 303 class A/B amp and their new 405 'Current dumping' amp using live recordings on a 'reel to reel' tape running at 15 ips. None of the reviewers/journalists could identify which particular type of amp they were listening to and QUAD did pull some 'sneaky' tricks like telling the listeners they'd changed amps when they hadn't leading these 'learned' experts to note down "Oh that was a different type of amp to the last one" when in fact it was the same kit they'd just listened to.

Peter Walker's famous quote is "The best Amplifier is a straight wire with gain" and the company motto is "The closest approach to the original sound"

 

[Profpointy]

QUAD once set up a 'blind' testing session between their Valve amp, the 303 class A/B amp and their new 405 'Current dumping' amp using live recordings on a 'reel to reel' tape running at 15 ips. None of the reviewers/journalists could identify which particular type of amp they were listening to and QUAD did pull some 'sneaky' tricks like telling the listeners they'd changed amps when they hadn't leading these 'learned' experts to note down "Oh that was a different type of amp to the last one" when in fact it was the same kit they'd just listened to.

Peter Walker's famous quote is "The best Amplifier is a straight wire with gain" and the company motto is "The closest approach to the original sound"

I read that article in Wireless World (a professional / trade electronics magazine) back in the 80s. Made quite an impression. The key to the test was to get the volume exactly the same, and also to do a statistical analysis of the A vs B compared to A vs A listening results. Granted Quad likely had the same approach to sound for both amps despite their very different componentry

I read of another example when Walker debunked a lot of the nonsense about speaker cable lengths. He had one speaker with a sensible length cable and the other one with a 100 yards or more: no difference

 

[Drago]

I read of another example when Walker debunked a lot of the nonsense about speaker cable lengths. He had one speaker with a sensible length cable and the other one with a 100 yards or more: no difference

Thats interesting, as cable length between i strument and amp, and thus capacitance, makes a noticeable difference with guitars and basses. Mind you, the voltages involved are much lower so any change would be far more significant I guess.