Does Today's Mid-fi gear Beat any HiFi gear from the 1970s? Or is it all drek?
- Thread starter caesar
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What perspective is that? CD players didn’t exist in the 70s? $500 turntables now were $100 then? An inexpensive DAC now is better than an old turntable? WTF kind of a comparison is that? LOL
They had some high tech turntables back then. And the music of the time was also unique. That experience I don't think it can be reproduced today, not in that state-of-mind. So in that regard each era follows its own unique music culture and technological advancement. To compare quality hi-fi from fifty years ago with today I think we have to take account for the "transportation", the music effect on the emotional level. That is only one of the several aspects in a fair comparison.
Today the sound quality is much more improved, and the music is also different, and we are fifty years olders, us the music listeners.
It's no wonder that some of us we cherish the music albums that we acquired in the 70s. They had tubes too back then, and fifty years later tubes are still with us and two days ago while shopping for some electronic accessories I saw some albums, vinyls @ my local Walmart store, including one from Frank Sinatra. /// Fifteen Canadian dollars.
New CDs, they still had some, new releases were from $10 to $15. Five or ten years from now they're will be no more CDs, but vinyls in stores were we go shopping for food, clothes, etc. Young people and older ones will buy them, even with all the hi-res audio file downloads from the internet world of computers and iPhones.
"Nothing Changes (Everything Stays The Same)"
Agree with the hearing, and disagree with the ganja quality.
That’s a good perspective. Thanks.
Bob, my point was Julius gave us no parameters to work from, limited timelines, $$ figures, definitions, etc. No meat, no substance, I guess we are just to use our own imagination .........oh wait , that's what audiophiles do naturally !
come to think of it ..........the replies generated have put the meat on the bone.........continue forward !
Julius...lol.
But you did not say it in your reply. I know what you mean; sometimes I post a link but no comment, or a music album cover and no comment, or start a thread without words, picture...
It is best to comment, I agree; few words on the link or the music album or a new thread. It's true that proposing the imagination of other members @ work is too easy of a job. I am guilty myself and I will never do it again. Participation is sharing intimate words. But I am also scared because what we can share sometimes get lost somehow, and that affects me a lot because that's what discussions are for; advancement.
There is one thread that needs no comment...the one I started few years ago...the picture/photograph one. It's different, pictures there speak for themselves, and it's always peaceful because there is no criticism. But criticism is very good for the soul, that's how we live in societies.
You are correct too by mentioning that with our replies we are the ones putting the "meat on the bone". There is certainly that.
Caesar starts threads that are discussions inspiring, opening up our thoughts. He is one of the top social leaders. If he has further thoughts to share I am convinced that he would, and he does often. It is the working together that make our forum a better planet to live in.
Now, in 1970 I was 15 and it was @ that time that I bought my first turntable. In the 70s I was listening to a vast music repertoire from classical music to the Beatles to Pink Floyd to King Crimson to French music to Cat Stevens to the Rolling Stones to a multitude of other music genres...Flamenco, Ballads, Jazz, Rock, Blues, Gentle Giant, Yes, Genesis, John Coltrane, etc.
A one million dollars sound system today will never bring back that experience of my youth...we all understand that.
What we all do today is what matters most, our souvenirs are today's sculptures of the past.
Today we have USB turntables for five hundred dollars, we have USB DACs for half of that, we have mid-fi gear that would eclipse easily hi-fi gear from fifty years ago on sound reproduction quality alone. I'm talking generally here, there are some exceptions. And the music recordings today, the better record labels...ECM, Reference Recordings< Channel Classics, etc., are also generally superior in quality music recordings.
If I listen to a Rolling Stones album today on SACD from a $200 SACD player and through a pair of $1,000 loudspeakers and a $500 integrated amp, as compared to fifty years ago, the same album on vinyl, say from a $1,000 hi-end turntable, with $3,000/pair loudspeakers and separate tube preamp and dual mono blocks...another $3,000...I can only scratch the surface as to which and which beats the dust from one another. In quality sound we tend to favor today, in quality essence we can't really tell, unless we balance all things equally, including our state-of-mind, over a period of fifty years, and we have the passion to share it right here with others in our own words.
I can look @ my past and @ today and say what I think. I can look @ my son (43-years old) and only imagine his own experience with what he shares and not. In the seventies he was just a baby. So the time affects our replies, the period we lived back then and live today with our choices on our gear and the music we listened to is all very important.
If we don't take human emotions into consideration when it comes to music sound reproduction through the periods of music history, we become artificial intelligence.
Those are just few thoughts; I can make it shorter, longer, I chose this. And I am aware.
There were no CD players in the 1970s.
The CD player wasn't introduced until October 1982
The iPod sure beat the walkmen.
Well, according to a friend of mine who just picked up a couple of original walkmen, this is not true
.Yes, I found it rather enjoyable, even though perhaps not for all music. Quite dynamic and clean, quite good tonality (even though perhaps not without some irritating details), very good bass. Let's look at it that way: My Octave amp costs 200 x more. Is it 200 times better? No
But is it much better? You bet.
500 will get you a pretty nice Japanese DD that will be VERY competitive...dare I say superior to the 99 buck Schiit...or one several notches higher for that matter.
Depends what you consider Hi Fi gear from the 1970's. Look at the prices that some of it brings today,some sells for 3 times the original cost. I gladly use a few pieces today in my system.
To further, there was SOTA then, and there is SOTA now. What's more interesting, the difference in today's SOTA and then's SOTA might surprise you in just how similar they are sonically, with regards to amplification and everything else in the analog domain. There are not that many different ways to run a tube or a transistor.
Properly restore an old Accuphase P-300/C-200 or a Sansui BA-F1/CA-F1 and tell me how far we have come. I have to stress, "properly" restore, but once done properly, this is truly amazing sounding gear. These are just a couple examples.
Properly restore an old Accuphase P-300/C-200 or a Sansui BA-F1/CA-F1 and tell me how far we have come. I have to stress, "properly" restore, but once done properly, this is truly amazing sounding gear. These are just a couple examples.
There are amps and preamps that are way better than stuff from the 70s!
They didn't even make balanced line stuff back then unless for pro audio. They do now. You can even get balanced line tube preamps with direct coupled outputs, such didn't exist in the 70s.
Turntables are a bit different- the Technics SP-10 MkIII is arguably one of the best machines made (although it dates from the 80s) and might now only be matched by Technics' newest SP-10.
Tonearms of yesteryear were OK, but there are better ones now, such as the Triplanar; I've yet to see any arm from the 70s challenge it, and for that matter any DAC.
Speakers have improved too- the Sound Lab ESL didn't exist back then and pretty well sets the bar for SOTA in ESLs. Horns back then were nice and are collectible, but modern horns have the benefit of CAD to optimize phase plug, throat and flare designs. There are also new materials like Kapton that can be used for surrounds in compression drivers. So horns have seen huge improvements.
Class D did not exist back then, although proposed much earlier than that. Class D is now a thing, and class A solid state is being challenged in a serious way.
There are so many examples!
They didn't even make balanced line stuff back then unless for pro audio. They do now. You can even get balanced line tube preamps with direct coupled outputs, such didn't exist in the 70s.
Turntables are a bit different- the Technics SP-10 MkIII is arguably one of the best machines made (although it dates from the 80s) and might now only be matched by Technics' newest SP-10.
Tonearms of yesteryear were OK, but there are better ones now, such as the Triplanar; I've yet to see any arm from the 70s challenge it, and for that matter any DAC.
Speakers have improved too- the Sound Lab ESL didn't exist back then and pretty well sets the bar for SOTA in ESLs. Horns back then were nice and are collectible, but modern horns have the benefit of CAD to optimize phase plug, throat and flare designs. There are also new materials like Kapton that can be used for surrounds in compression drivers. So horns have seen huge improvements.
Class D did not exist back then, although proposed much earlier than that. Class D is now a thing, and class A solid state is being challenged in a serious way.
There are so many examples!
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