(This is a follow up to the more philosophical thinking in P.Cell Listen Up!)
Around 1975 i ran a ex demo Luxman 309 75w Amp a Linn Sondek with Grace 707 arm,
Cartridges from Decca Gold, Sonus Blue and MC Supex 900, Entre, FRMk2 and biggish
S/H Speakers from Kef and Wharfdale.
Now compared with what i own to-day on a more expensive level the only difference
i can be sure about is the Amp is more transparent. Perhaps the various things that need
attention May be a little different but when i think about it no i dont think that is so at all.
Now Sans substances. The enjoyment level which is the only possible setting you can employ, well it is the same!
And this is not just Rose coloured glasses experimenting with Vintage Hi-Fi shows it
still does the job except for the previously mentioned Amp transparency.
(Note. Digital anything is not of this realm so is not included)
But when you look at the 45yrs of continuous improvement claims, the Magazine Reviews
backing it all up, would you not feel a little short changed if this be the result?
Or perhaps others have had decades of upgradable enjoyment and have far moved on
in this respect from the old days.
I think aesthetics are a big consideration as well as sound quality, especially for those whose systems are in the living spaces. speakers especially have come a long way in terms of getting a bigger sound out of a smaller box and you can get any amount of fantastic sounding half width or small footprint all in ones that just disappear into the room. So its not so much that the sound is better as its getting easier to achieve a good sound with less gear…
I genuinely loved the equipment I had during the 70’s, and despite having a wonderful Nova, still hunt down elements of it, amp wise any way, I consider a lot of 70’s stuff characterful as well as decent sounding, it’s all in he ears of the beholder!
Upgrades just compensate for age induced hearing loss. Once you have a 500 system it might even sound as good as your entry level 70s system if you’re lucky!
Well… Luxman amps look basically the same today as they did in the 70s.
Hi end electronics from the 70s are fairly timeless aesthetically in my view. Speakers haven’t visually changed much. Harbeths or JBLs look like 70s boxes.
Nostalgia is a powerful drug.
I think it is very hard to separate the actual quality of hifi versus the sheer joy/interest in music as a young man. Is my Nova/PMC 25.21 set up ‘better’ than my Rega RP3/NAD 3020/Mission 70 Mk2’s? Undoubtedly.
Does it give me more pleasure than my first hifi system - I don’t think so
I swapped a pair of KEF Coda III’s into the bedroom system last week. Node 2i, CD5i and Nait5si. It is really hard to hear the difference between them and the very modern Focal Chora 806’s that are usually used. I also have a much stronger attachment to the KEF’s, I enjoy them as they represent my HiFi past.
For many (most?) of us, of a certain age, the late 70’s (and 80’s) hifi was our first foray into ‘proper’ music reproduction in the home, and as such was a revelation, well it was for me anyway.
Such a revelation was bound to leave a long-lasting impression of how wonderful real hifi is. No matter how much kit has moved on, and no matter how much we have upgraded in recent decades, nothing can compare with that first experience, IMHO.
So yes, I do think, to some extent, it is a case of looking back through rose-tinted spectacles, augmented by the psychology behind fond memories of our youth and that initial discovery of music in the home. I do occasionally catch myself thinking ‘…things were simpler and better back then…’. All we had to fret about was the cartridge we used on our Rega Planars and, when it was eventually realised that cables do make a difference, did we need better speaker cables than our QED 79’s. In fact, I remember being quite impressed with thin bell wire. I blame that Jimmy Hughes bloke!
There was a reasonably short list of great TT’s, integrated amps and speakers to play with, back then. But then CD arrived and caused much confusion and soul searching.
Happy days, but was the hifi as good back then? I think not.
In the 80’s, I designed and built a few amps.
Compared to amps in similar price brackets (Audiolab, Mission, Musical Fidelity integrated amps, any Japanese integrated amp!), my later two amps were good for the time; currently, however many (but not all!) amps at similar points in the price hierarchy are now better than mine were.
Saving yourself for the “Xanthe Statement” amp😁
In the 70’s I had wharfedale speakers (not floorstanders thought they were not small either) , turntable with plastic cover (and vague memories of a weight at the back of the arm) and a silver amp…
I don’t think they were high end but I was in a good well paid job at the time so were not cheap either.
I can’t for the life of me pull back TT and amp brand names.
Would I go back - sorry, no.
In the '70s there was good hifi (and some great and still great) but there was also fair bit of kit that was rubbish. I think these days the overall standard of what we could agree is “hifi” is overall at a much higher level and it’s rare now to come across of piece of hifi kit that is truly poor in build, finish or performance.
I have good memories of Pioneer pl12d, Pioneer sx 450, Wharfedale Dentons. I suspect an equivalent priced modern Denon, Regar/Project P1, Denon Spektors would blow the socks off them.
These
and these
with one of these
Was all any young man needed in 1980 when he was 21yrs old.
It was stunning (to me anyway) and all stolen in 2020.
Very nice looking NAC225 and NAP125.
We’ve come quite a long way, me thinks, from decks running stretched tape repaired with bits of Scotch tape over a dirty head at an unreliable speed passing what data is retrieved through filters and noise controls before making its way via phone wire cabling to amplifiers with noisy transformers and with loudness controls and equalisers all stacked atop each other on a shelf sitting on bricks playing through speakers in chip board boxes held together with staples and a bit of cheap sponge inside sitting on a sprung wooden floor in a room with single glazed windows and a sunken lounge of shag pile and cushions.
I think Claire is spot on when she says nostalgia is a wonderful thing. From the late sixties on, when I started with a Phillips ‘Audio Plan’ system, (anyone else remember that stuff?) which sounded fine on a five minute dem but was awful after a couple of weeks at home, and after working my way through all sorts of kit, nothing ever completely satisfied me. It was only when I got into Naim (entry level) in the early nineties that I began to get an inkling of what HiFi could be. Now, with a top flight Naim system I sit in awe of it every night. Never has listening to music been so utterly satisfying.
I was informed that a VERY well-known “Naim person” now retired now runs modern-day Klipsch speakers (I forget - Forte? La Scala? I’m not sure). I’ve not heard them but I have to imagine that there’s some ‘70s sound’ there. I think he runs them with 135(s).