7 ms·

I'm fond of my '70s/80s audio gear from a perspective of build quality and maintainability. Yes, pretty knobs matter. The right heft and feel is part of a qua

by hakfoo 5y ago

I'm fond of my '70s/80s audio gear from a perspective of build quality and maintainability. Yes, pretty knobs matter. The right heft and feel is part of a quality user experience. I bought a bottom-of-the-range new Sony AVR in like 2010, and the experience sucked because too many options were buried behind a complex OSD and menu, while on the equivalent 40-year-old model was a single direct-access button. You can crush a Harman/Kardon 730 to its component atoms, and there's an enthusiastic community that will help you restore it to operability. Virtually all the parts are available on Mouser or Digi-Key, and many can be replaced with better ones (tighter tolerances, smaller physical sizes) for peanuts. I doubt that new Sony AVR will ever be close to as fixable, let alone 40 years from now. It's entirely possible that the right new kit will sound better, but I suspect as much as anything I'm room and layout limited more than gear limited. No point getting to -200dB signal to noise when there's a constant AC and CPU fan whine in the backdrop.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
What are the knobs for? EQ? that's terrible. Digital room correction can do it almost infinitely better. Balance control? just say no. And you can't have been talking about tuning controls because that's radio, and why would anyone listen to radio on high quality audio systems today? So maybe just a big fat volume knob, milled from virgin aluminum, and used a heat sink for the non-existening heat production from the non-existent amplifier (it's all in the speakers). Yeah, I can go for that.
- hakfoo 5y ago
  I like radio, especially when I'm working on the PC containing digital media. Have a top-end Yamaha tuner from the 90s that I paid $15 for at the thrift shop. It's actually sort of disappointing in knob feel, but it pulls signals better than other tuners I've tried.
- bserge 5y ago
  Speakers with built-in amps are cheap, noisy and generally low quality. Funny enough, the art of setting up a good stereo system (using said knobs) seems to have been lost. Probably because few can afford more than a closet these days (and good headphones are cheap).
- BoxOfRain 5y ago
  > why would anyone listen to radio on high quality audio systems today? I do, it was useful when I had flakey internet and the habit stuck. Analogue FM sounds a lot better than the “compressed to buggery and probably in mono” tone of DAB as well in my opinion. There’s also the aesthetic factor, I’m a huge fan of glowing dials and physical analogue controls.
- gglitch 5y ago
  I deeply love my local nonprofit/coop radio stations; the personalities, the history, and the diversity of the music they play all add up to a strong feeling of community. They do stream, but the streams are 128k. I concede the irony of listening to some dj's scratchy 45s transmitted to my middling radio setup by FM in the context of an article about high fidelity audio, but what can I say, I love it, and the sound is part of what I love. Edit: PS, I also deeply love Ardour and routinely learn a lot from you here and elsewhere. Thanks.
jolux 5y ago
It seems the Harman/Kardon 730 was originally around $400, which in present-day dollars is around $2000. Do you happen to know if a $2000 receiver today might be closer in quality? I ask partially because I'm into this myself, and I'm not sure what things are like these days.
- Synaesthesia 5y ago
  You can get a $30 class D amp which will sound indistinguishable and use way less power
  - squarefoot 5y ago
    I never did any close comparison, but a class D amp, if well built, sounds really clean with no audible noise in background, drawing a fraction of the power and costing a fraction of the money. Some people think they're of inferior quality for being "digital", but class D amps aren't digital at all, they're 100% analog just like traditional ones. The best way to explain how they work is comparing them to power supplies: a traditional class A/B amplifier is to a linear power supply what a class D is to a switching one: they work as PWM drivers wrt the load, but being the frequency really high (hundreds of KHz) there's no way they could produce unwanted noises, which would be easy to filter anyway using small cap+inductors networks. Those filters usually are also enough to avoid inaudible rf noises and audible heterodyne-generated noises in case two different amps in the same room work at slightly different frequencies. That however is not the case for amps enclosed in the same box (stereo or multi channel amps) as they have their clock sync signal in common and wouldn't generate any unwanted signals anyway.
    - hakfoo 5y ago
      It feels like it's hard to find a "well built" Class D product. A lot of what's on the market seems to have ambitious or vague specs. It makes me suspicious when I see those Lepai-style amplifiers that are the size of a CD-ROM drive and claim "30 watts per channel... at 10% distortion." Would it even be able to meet those numbers under the test conditions, used for rating amplifiers in the '70s? I suspect they get much tighter numbers at less ambitious wattages, and honestly, most real world listening isn't going to break 1 watt, but it feels like they're not really starting from a place of credibility. From there, even a competent design seems to usually be sold as half a unit-- typically paired with a laptop-style PSU. I'm sure there's a huge range of quality and suitability of pairing, and it's another ugly cable management game to play. It's not going to fit neatly anywhere designed for traditional-sized components. There are probably some decent all-inclusive units once you move past the $50 AliExpress market, but then you're looking at more complex products and more elaborate competition: the fact it's Class D architecture is one bullet point among things like the number of inputs and outputs, video handling capability, and user experience.
jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
So there's little question modern receivers are far higher quality, primarily because of digitization and what it's enabled. In particular, the better room correction systems make a dramatic difference, and that's based on research that correctly correlates subjective preference to objective measures. But the problem is none of this stuff is engineered to last in the same way. Many of the products are taking a base board design from an upstream vendor and only doing the minimal amount of work to give it a unique looking physical and OSD skin. They cheap out on the components they use as much as possible, even the mid tier brands considered to have high build quality. You're lucky if you get a decade out of one now, though admitted part of what's driving that is the assumption that features and interconnect standards are going to keep advancing fast enough that designing for a longer lifespan is pointless. But it does feel a bit aggravating to throw something out every 10 years or so when you know it's probably just a couple caps or the like that have gone toast, but it's just not feasible to repair these DIY. When I was a kid I got a hand me down Zenith stereo set from my grandmother. I'm sure the materials in the speaker drivers had degraded somewhat, but it still worked as perfectly as the day it was sold decades earlier. Not sure what my folks did with it, but I wouldn't at all be surprised if I found it in the attic, plugged it in, and it was still just fine.
- Aloha 5y ago
  The old zenith stuff is great because it uses mostly mica caps, so they're pretty likely to be working.
- davidthewatson 5y ago
  Sadly, I have a beautiful condition Technics turntable from that period. Cast Aluminum, made in Japan. However, I could not find a comparable receiver from that period at any reasonable price, with the expectation that it wouldn't require work, so it's hooked up to a modern receiver that's commodity on Amazon. The sound of this setup is pretty solid given that the vinyl is as old as the turntable, but like the receiver, the 3-ways are contemporary. I've replaced modern receivers at about 1 in 10 years going back to a Sony ES and my current Yamaha is about that old. I'm sure if I had the skills, it's just a power supply or amp or something similar.
- 5y ago

by hakfoo 5y ago

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

What are the knobs for? EQ? that's terrible. Digital room correction can do it almost infinitely better. Balance control? just say no. And you can't have been talking about tuning controls because that's radio, and why would anyone listen to radio on high quality audio systems today? So maybe just a big fat volume knob, milled from virgin aluminum, and used a heat sink for the non-existening heat production from the non-existent amplifier (it's all in the speakers). Yeah, I can go for that.

hakfoo 5y ago
I like radio, especially when I'm working on the PC containing digital media. Have a top-end Yamaha tuner from the 90s that I paid $15 for at the thrift shop. It's actually sort of disappointing in knob feel, but it pulls signals better than other tuners I've tried.
bserge 5y ago
Speakers with built-in amps are cheap, noisy and generally low quality. Funny enough, the art of setting up a good stereo system (using said knobs) seems to have been lost. Probably because few can afford more than a closet these days (and good headphones are cheap).
BoxOfRain 5y ago
> why would anyone listen to radio on high quality audio systems today? I do, it was useful when I had flakey internet and the habit stuck. Analogue FM sounds a lot better than the “compressed to buggery and probably in mono” tone of DAB as well in my opinion. There’s also the aesthetic factor, I’m a huge fan of glowing dials and physical analogue controls.
gglitch 5y ago
I deeply love my local nonprofit/coop radio stations; the personalities, the history, and the diversity of the music they play all add up to a strong feeling of community. They do stream, but the streams are 128k. I concede the irony of listening to some dj's scratchy 45s transmitted to my middling radio setup by FM in the context of an article about high fidelity audio, but what can I say, I love it, and the sound is part of what I love. Edit: PS, I also deeply love Ardour and routinely learn a lot from you here and elsewhere. Thanks.

jolux 5y ago

It seems the Harman/Kardon 730 was originally around $400, which in present-day dollars is around $2000. Do you happen to know if a $2000 receiver today might be closer in quality? I ask partially because I'm into this myself, and I'm not sure what things are like these days.

Synaesthesia 5y ago
You can get a $30 class D amp which will sound indistinguishable and use way less power
- squarefoot 5y ago
  I never did any close comparison, but a class D amp, if well built, sounds really clean with no audible noise in background, drawing a fraction of the power and costing a fraction of the money. Some people think they're of inferior quality for being "digital", but class D amps aren't digital at all, they're 100% analog just like traditional ones. The best way to explain how they work is comparing them to power supplies: a traditional class A/B amplifier is to a linear power supply what a class D is to a switching one: they work as PWM drivers wrt the load, but being the frequency really high (hundreds of KHz) there's no way they could produce unwanted noises, which would be easy to filter anyway using small cap+inductors networks. Those filters usually are also enough to avoid inaudible rf noises and audible heterodyne-generated noises in case two different amps in the same room work at slightly different frequencies. That however is not the case for amps enclosed in the same box (stereo or multi channel amps) as they have their clock sync signal in common and wouldn't generate any unwanted signals anyway.
  - hakfoo 5y ago
    It feels like it's hard to find a "well built" Class D product. A lot of what's on the market seems to have ambitious or vague specs. It makes me suspicious when I see those Lepai-style amplifiers that are the size of a CD-ROM drive and claim "30 watts per channel... at 10% distortion." Would it even be able to meet those numbers under the test conditions, used for rating amplifiers in the '70s? I suspect they get much tighter numbers at less ambitious wattages, and honestly, most real world listening isn't going to break 1 watt, but it feels like they're not really starting from a place of credibility. From there, even a competent design seems to usually be sold as half a unit-- typically paired with a laptop-style PSU. I'm sure there's a huge range of quality and suitability of pairing, and it's another ugly cable management game to play. It's not going to fit neatly anywhere designed for traditional-sized components. There are probably some decent all-inclusive units once you move past the $50 AliExpress market, but then you're looking at more complex products and more elaborate competition: the fact it's Class D architecture is one bullet point among things like the number of inputs and outputs, video handling capability, and user experience.

jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago

So there's little question modern receivers are far higher quality, primarily because of digitization and what it's enabled. In particular, the better room correction systems make a dramatic difference, and that's based on research that correctly correlates subjective preference to objective measures. But the problem is none of this stuff is engineered to last in the same way. Many of the products are taking a base board design from an upstream vendor and only doing the minimal amount of work to give it a unique looking physical and OSD skin. They cheap out on the components they use as much as possible, even the mid tier brands considered to have high build quality. You're lucky if you get a decade out of one now, though admitted part of what's driving that is the assumption that features and interconnect standards are going to keep advancing fast enough that designing for a longer lifespan is pointless. But it does feel a bit aggravating to throw something out every 10 years or so when you know it's probably just a couple caps or the like that have gone toast, but it's just not feasible to repair these DIY. When I was a kid I got a hand me down Zenith stereo set from my grandmother. I'm sure the materials in the speaker drivers had degraded somewhat, but it still worked as perfectly as the day it was sold decades earlier. Not sure what my folks did with it, but I wouldn't at all be surprised if I found it in the attic, plugged it in, and it was still just fine.

Aloha 5y ago
The old zenith stuff is great because it uses mostly mica caps, so they're pretty likely to be working.
davidthewatson 5y ago
Sadly, I have a beautiful condition Technics turntable from that period. Cast Aluminum, made in Japan. However, I could not find a comparable receiver from that period at any reasonable price, with the expectation that it wouldn't require work, so it's hooked up to a modern receiver that's commodity on Amazon. The sound of this setup is pretty solid given that the vinyl is as old as the turntable, but like the receiver, the 3-ways are contemporary. I've replaced modern receivers at about 1 in 10 years going back to a Sony ES and my current Yamaha is about that old. I'm sure if I had the skills, it's just a power supply or amp or something similar.
5y ago