6 ms·

I will nod to your choice of using a reciever and "conventional" speakers. In addition, you can get amazing value on that stuff used. Nobody wants, say, pre-H

by hakfoo 6y ago

I will nod to your choice of using a reciever and "conventional" speakers. In addition, you can get amazing value on that stuff used. Nobody wants, say, pre-HDMI AV recievers, so you can buy top-of-the-line units that sold for $1000 in 1995 for $30 today, and it's perfectly capable for 2-channel PC audio. Go back a few more years and you get into the domain of vintage 70s silver gear-- not so much cheap anymore, but a lot of of it has truly impressive build quality and servicability. Same with the big old speakers which predate the "tiny satelites + subwoofer" designs. I think you could set up an empty Goodwill in a sealed enclosure, never let a person into it, and several sets of Fisher and Technics speakers with 12" or 15" woofers and $19.95 price tags would spontaneously generate. I splurged a bit and got the Pioneer "Andrew Jones" floorstanding speakers (about USD250 per pair) like 5 or 6 years ago, and power them with a 1980 JVC A-X4 amplifier (about USD100 used, but I put about 75 more in rebuilding it) Since it's in a 10x15 room, you don't need a remote to change sources.

xeromal 6y ago
I never considered that, but I can totally see major discounts in pre-HD era equipment. Has there not been a lot of gains (like going from 420P to 4k) in the audio-side of things in that past 10 or 20 years? If not, can I use that same reasoning and buy some top shelf old speakers? I've always wanted to do it but I didn't want to be ripped off.
- acdha 6y ago
  Uncompressed digital audio hit the limits of human perception around the turn of the century. The big things affecting people’s perceived quality were bad compression, noise due to things like poor shielding on low-end computers, or using something like Bluetooth where bandwidth constraints forced heavy compression. If you get a decent DAC (which isn’t a ton of money - USB devices are quite mature) a 20-30 year old system is going to sound great. Newer ones might be smaller or use less power but sound reproduction has been mature for many decades.
  - fggg444 6y ago
    not too sure what you mean by uncompressed because digital audio is always lossy by its very nature
    - fomine3 6y ago
      It's true due to sampling, but anyway nowadays all music source is digital so can't be a problem.
      - Doxin 6y ago
        Sampling only limits the highest possible frequency, it doesn't quantize over time like a lot of people expect it to. Unless frequencies above 22khz are somehow an integral part of your listening experience you can use 44khz and suffer no ill effects. Anyone talking about sampling and showing you a graph with stair steps is misleading. No DAC would be able to produce such a perfect stair step in the first place, let alone be tuned to do so on purpose.
    - acdha 6y ago
      All recordings have loss, nothing unique about digital in that regard. The point I was making was simply that once CD quality (16-bit, 44hz) became mainstream and only modestly more expensive hardware could get into 24-bit / 96khz range you were past the point where almost anyone – even trained “golden ears” listeners — could notice a difference from further improvements in that regard. Given real-world limits, the threshold was lower for most people. The reason I mentioned compression is because you’d find people who’d say digital recordings didn’t sound good but misattributed why: the problem wasn’t digital, it was either low-quality codec implementations, constricted bit-rates[1], or technical flaws like the MP3 format’s inability to precisely handle sharp attack sounds like cymbals. If you did an A/B test with those, yes, people would notice a difference but the same was true of uncompressed audio or compression using newer codecs. 1. e.g. pre-VoLTE cell phone audio sounded terrible on most carriers unless you edited your phone’s settings to increase the bitrate, because the carriers were trying to fit more customers onto each cell tower. A little more bandwidth and it sounded much closer to landline calls.
- Arcanum-XIII 6y ago
  There was no major change in the speaker itself for a long while - a top of the line speaker from the 80 is probably still good... if the material aged well. The elasticity of the membrane probably suffered more than anything else for example. That’s why modern speaker still cost a lot.
- declnz 6y ago
  My take on this: Some advances, but nothing that noticeable for large or medium-sized home speakers, compared to other advances. Related story: until not long ago I used some inherited 70s Kef HiFi speakers with a cheap modernish amp, and they sounded lovely, even against more modern equivalents (which I also had). A mid-70s TV, though...
the_only_law 6y ago
I’ve wondered about this for a while after hearing an impressive setup visiting someone’s house using mostly equipment from the 90s. Are there any particular brands or models to look for?
- hakfoo 6y ago
  Honestly, the short answer is to google model numbers and look at discussions on sites like Audiokarma. The TLDR is that most Japanese "name brands you've heard of" from the 1970s are pretty good. After the mid 1980s, the build quality starts to nosedive. Top-of-range models are often still impressive, but more of the BOM cost ends up on things like decoding defunct Surround Sound formats and rear-channel amplification. This often corresponds with the change from silver-alumiuum faceplates to black plastic, and the expression "Black Plastic C*p". Speakers are a lot more subjective and also more subject to material degredation-- the foam ring that attaches the speaker cones to the casing can go brittle or crack or fall apart. This can be fixed with rebuild kits for many models, but this is a situation where new kit has some benefits with improved materials science.

by hakfoo 6y ago

xeromal 6y ago

I never considered that, but I can totally see major discounts in pre-HD era equipment. Has there not been a lot of gains (like going from 420P to 4k) in the audio-side of things in that past 10 or 20 years? If not, can I use that same reasoning and buy some top shelf old speakers? I've always wanted to do it but I didn't want to be ripped off.

acdha 6y ago
Uncompressed digital audio hit the limits of human perception around the turn of the century. The big things affecting people’s perceived quality were bad compression, noise due to things like poor shielding on low-end computers, or using something like Bluetooth where bandwidth constraints forced heavy compression. If you get a decent DAC (which isn’t a ton of money - USB devices are quite mature) a 20-30 year old system is going to sound great. Newer ones might be smaller or use less power but sound reproduction has been mature for many decades.
- fggg444 6y ago
  not too sure what you mean by uncompressed because digital audio is always lossy by its very nature
  - fomine3 6y ago
    It's true due to sampling, but anyway nowadays all music source is digital so can't be a problem.
    - Doxin 6y ago
      Sampling only limits the highest possible frequency, it doesn't quantize over time like a lot of people expect it to. Unless frequencies above 22khz are somehow an integral part of your listening experience you can use 44khz and suffer no ill effects. Anyone talking about sampling and showing you a graph with stair steps is misleading. No DAC would be able to produce such a perfect stair step in the first place, let alone be tuned to do so on purpose.
  - acdha 6y ago
    All recordings have loss, nothing unique about digital in that regard. The point I was making was simply that once CD quality (16-bit, 44hz) became mainstream and only modestly more expensive hardware could get into 24-bit / 96khz range you were past the point where almost anyone – even trained “golden ears” listeners — could notice a difference from further improvements in that regard. Given real-world limits, the threshold was lower for most people. The reason I mentioned compression is because you’d find people who’d say digital recordings didn’t sound good but misattributed why: the problem wasn’t digital, it was either low-quality codec implementations, constricted bit-rates[1], or technical flaws like the MP3 format’s inability to precisely handle sharp attack sounds like cymbals. If you did an A/B test with those, yes, people would notice a difference but the same was true of uncompressed audio or compression using newer codecs. 1. e.g. pre-VoLTE cell phone audio sounded terrible on most carriers unless you edited your phone’s settings to increase the bitrate, because the carriers were trying to fit more customers onto each cell tower. A little more bandwidth and it sounded much closer to landline calls.
Arcanum-XIII 6y ago
There was no major change in the speaker itself for a long while - a top of the line speaker from the 80 is probably still good... if the material aged well. The elasticity of the membrane probably suffered more than anything else for example. That’s why modern speaker still cost a lot.
declnz 6y ago
My take on this: Some advances, but nothing that noticeable for large or medium-sized home speakers, compared to other advances. Related story: until not long ago I used some inherited 70s Kef HiFi speakers with a cheap modernish amp, and they sounded lovely, even against more modern equivalents (which I also had). A mid-70s TV, though...

the_only_law 6y ago

I’ve wondered about this for a while after hearing an impressive setup visiting someone’s house using mostly equipment from the 90s. Are there any particular brands or models to look for?

hakfoo 6y ago
Honestly, the short answer is to google model numbers and look at discussions on sites like Audiokarma. The TLDR is that most Japanese "name brands you've heard of" from the 1970s are pretty good. After the mid 1980s, the build quality starts to nosedive. Top-of-range models are often still impressive, but more of the BOM cost ends up on things like decoding defunct Surround Sound formats and rear-channel amplification. This often corresponds with the change from silver-alumiuum faceplates to black plastic, and the expression "Black Plastic C*p". Speakers are a lot more subjective and also more subject to material degredation-- the foam ring that attaches the speaker cones to the casing can go brittle or crack or fall apart. This can be fixed with rebuild kits for many models, but this is a situation where new kit has some benefits with improved materials science.