old Hi Fi

[legrandefromage]

Modern av amps are great at easy connection and integration between manufacturers but the sound is only so so.

The neighbour bought an new expensive Bose thing. Big sub tiny sound bar style speaker.it sounds ok at best but is blown away by an ancient set of Bose 301 and an old amp.

Home cinema kept a dying art alive for a while but that was short lived.

High resolution audio is the next exciting thing but with just about all old stuff capable of high res replay there's not much scope for investing in new gear. Obtaining decent source material will be the fun part. It's not like you can add to an early Stones recording to make it 'high res'.

It was perfectly possible to record in high resolution back then just by speeding up the tape.

Dat was 48khz from the go with 96khz in the early 90's. Dvd was capable of 192khz in two channel but nobody took it up.

So, back to the start. High end has gone stupid following the money. Mid range has all but evaporated and we're left with the bluetooth crud.

And sound bars.... God awful things that sprung from a neat idea from yamaha - a multi driver array to 'direct' surround sound from clever software / small unit. This morphed into cabinets with a pair of drivers that are used inside flat screen TVs - ie shite! Partner these bars with God awful subs and you have new wave of tat that will appear at a tip near you.

I did see a Sony bluetooth sub that works well with the latest smart tellies. But then with millions spent mastering audio, it's played on £159 argos turd.

£15 gets you a bt gadget that turns anything with an input into a streaming device. So don't chuck that old amp out yet...

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Wireless-Blue ... 462cd1d0f7

Now I'm off the crappy phone and back on an old fashioned desktop - I can add a little more.

Hifi's golden years are actually quite short and came in around the mid 1970's coming to an end in the early 1980's. Hundreds more companies each with their own ideas - good or bad. The 90's gave us plastic Arcam, yuk! All but killed off Audiolab and Quad plus many many more casualties as fashions moved on.

Heres my personal favourite era of Pioneer - you just cant do this in a modern build flat let alone play it

 

[legrandefromage]

You can spend hours here, looking at old stuff:

http://www.thevintageknob.org/

 

[ovlov440]

I still run a Cambridge Audio CD6 (mid 90's) CD Player and it still amazes me how good the sound is, especially when I compared it to the NAD DVD/CD player I had - comparing Def Leppards 'Hysteria' side by side on them was night and day. The NAD unit was reckoned to be a good all-in-one unit but I am glad that when I was purchasing it I took the salesmans advice and didn't sell the CD6.

I also have a pair of Tannoy 631 speakers of the same area that I use (via an AMP) to play music from my laptop in my office. It is often a surprise to people when they hear it that A: they are small speakers and B: there is no sub attached!

We do have a soundbar but it is on the upstairs telly and to be fair, does give a major improvement to the shite inbuilt TV speakers.

Ade

 

[rosstheboss]

We do have a soundbar but it is on the upstairs telly and to be fair, does give a major improvement to the shite inbuilt TV speakers.

Ade

This.

Soundbars serve a purpose - I'd love to have a multi speaker, enormously amped system with undoubtable heft but I can't be arsed. They're expensive, the cat or kid would f*ck about with the cables and I'd only be able to 'use' it once in a blue moon. Soundbars add an enormous amount to the pony that is offered up by your tv's standard speakers. Yes, there is some crap about but spend a little and you get a lot more than you do with your telly.
For the record I have CA Azur cd and amp in the house so have a vague idea of what hifi is. I can see why the purists would hate soundbars (they shouldn't work but do!) but for everyday use they're not half bad.

 

[rosstheboss]

Not that I'm biased or anything.... (Who's Ross Jackson......?)

http://www.howtoliveit.co.uk/2014/08/15 ... KMhCyusWSo

 

[legrandefromage]

You dont need a multi amped monster and it neednt be expensive. But sound bars are utterly crap in comparison to even the simplest two speaker/ sub set up. And it can all be made child friendly and cat resistant.

 

[argonsixar]

Re:

I have now rattled round my loft and found the turntable I bought back then. Its an old Dual, but doesn't have a cartridge. I was wondering if anyone here knows of a good source of such things?

I also found my old records- long since unplayed. Lots of Jethro Tull, Mott the Hoople, Bowie, Yes, Genesis, Led Zep , Cheap Trick. I even have a copy of Olias of Sunhillow by Jon Anderson which I had forgotten about. I must find a way to play that again!

 

[xxnick1975]

Re:

nice to see some of the old pictures here, i've got bits of old hi fi kit kicking about in various places, but it all just takes up so much room

why cant they make a small unit that sounds good - is it physics?

 

[secret_squirrel]

The problem with soundbars is there is a lot of tat around for decent hifi money. There are good examples like the pioneer (or was it yamaha? ) LGF mentioned but by and alarge they are cack. More so when you consider that most of them now add a good foot of depth to your ultra-slim wall mounted Lcd telly.

I'm no hifi nut but I will lay good odds that few sound bars come close to my Sony DAV1S microspeakers and half decent sub, also far more discrete than any soundbars and does 5.1

 

[rosstheboss]

The LG I tested was pretty skinny and unobtrusive, completely wireless and certainly added a hell of a lot over the TV speakers. I have seen the huge ones which are silly, but as an enhancement as opposed to a full home cinema solution they work well.