Not-So-Hi-Fi versus Hi-Fi speakers

  On 11/17/2017 at 6:23 PM, joshuatx said:

 

  On 11/17/2017 at 6:02 PM, RSP said:

Old hi-fi.

 

On my second set of these, been sing them for over a decade and my total utlay so far for both pairs is $10 plus another $15 or so to put new surrounds on the second set.

 

Not "hi fi" in the modern audiophile sense, but really great sounding and I've successfully done a lot of mixing on them before I had the money for nice monitors.

 

 

A lot of old stuff before black plastic crap of the late 80s onward just sounds inherently better, unless it's like cheap department store stuff. In other words old "mid-fi" from the 60s, 70s, and 80s sounds great if you can find it at garage sales or thrift stores. I used a pair of early 80s Realistic (Radioshack) 2-way speakers and they do the job just fine. 

 

Yeah, I used to live in Boston and work in Cambridge, so early AR and KLH speakers (both were manufactured in Cambridge during the entire period where they were good) would just show up in thrift shops and in the trash.  Been using them for years, before I learned to replace surrounds and got the 2a's fixed I was using KLH-17s and AR4-axes. I used to know a couple guys through work who had and were constantly tinkering with pretty high end systems (not the insane, placebo effect level audiophile stuff but the step below, where they would pay for an amp or pair of speakers what I would pay for 4-6 months rent at the time) and I consistently liked the old salvaged system I'd set up (at the time it was a Technics SP-15 turntable, a pair of AR 2a speakers, and a Scott 299c tube amp, total cost $90 - $80 was for the turntable -  plus the cost of a new cartridge and another $100 or so to restore the tube amp).  Right now I'm using a trashpicked early NAD amp because the tube amp needs same work after spending a year in storage after a move a while back and it's not quite as nice sounding but I'm still completely satisfied other than the speakers being past due for a capacitor change.

Point is, it's harder now than a decade ago but if you live in a major city (and even in the much smaller city where I live now stuff still shows up, you just have to look more) you should still be able to put together a really nice sounding system for not much money.

Modern hi-fi speakers are more about hitting specs and sounding impressive in the showroom so that people buy them, but the old stuff just sounds NICE.

+1 for older hi fi kit, Pioneer SX-series stuff is normally quite expensive second-hand but the ones intended mainly as radio receivers have an amp built in and can be gripped for sixty quid or so on the 'bay:

Sounds and looks lush as fuck; these were one of the last models they made before everything went plastic in the '80s, afaik. Paired with a pair of ancient Panasonic speakers from my parents' attic which are not high end at all but still sound decent. Total cost about £60, great for mixing on as well as long as you check in with headphones etc for reference now and then.

Headphones are great too for casual laptop listens/checking your panning in mixes/getting caned and doing transcendental deep listens. Pioneer into headphones is lush audio heaven, particularly with '60s/70s records.

If you can find older, silver-face Marantz stuff that is really nice, too, we used to get them from time to time when I worked at a record shop and they always sounded great.  Not so affordable anymore, but what is?  Even back then in the mid 2000s we'd ask $50-$100 for them (That was high for us).

Edit:

This family of Marantz receivers is the stuff that sounds great but you might still get a deal on - their standalone power amps and stuff were already really expensive back when I was seeing these for under $100 regularly.  Blue lights, horizontal tuning wheel, brushed aluminum front - there are quite a few different models and they're all great.

The downside with old solid state is sometimes it has parts that can be really hard to replace if they fail, unlike tube gear that's usually readily repairable as long as the transformers don't go.

I would love to have one of these:

Built in analog phase correlation meter/oscilloscope!

I guess I now know where d16 get their inspiration from:

Damn it, this thread reminded me that back in 2006 I could have gotten a Transcriptors Skeleton turntable for $90 but I didn't do it because it needed a new cartridge and a full setup and I couldn't afford that/was just getting in to turntables and thought that was too much to spend on one.

The SP-15 I ended up settling on a few years later is jsut as nice (and cost even less) but it doesn't have that "I am the villain in a Giallo film" thing going on.

older american gear is pretty good. I'm rocking a pair of cerwins from the 70s hooked up to a QSC rmx2450. Paired with a couple velodyne subs, it definitely has volume (sounds pretty good too tbh, has to be properly powered though).

Was originally using my Parasound hca1500a but it wasn't powerful enough, kept blowing fuses in the speakers. Also have a lovely pair of jbl l100t3s from around the same era, maybe early 80s.

You get a far higher quality setup for your $$$ if you buy 70s-80s gear, compared to new stuff. There's a lot of shitty stuff out there too but as long as you know what you're looking for?

1974

My amp at home, 1970s vintage. Sounds great, but I need to get some contact cleaner on the volume knob as it's crackly at the moment

We’re using a sansui solid state 800 manufactured in 68.

  On 11/19/2017 at 2:02 AM, frankbooth said:

We’re using a sansui solid state 800 manufactured in 68.

I've got a sansui au 4900. 

Sansui AU20000 is an AMAZING amplifier if you can find one in good condition.

Wow

I'm using my Hi-Fly speakers to listen to music and feels so weird to have my ears adjusting to hearing frequencies under 200 hz

Like putting eye glasses / contact lenses on but for ears

I don't like bass

i'm not a "bass head"

i'm a midrange head