Originally Posted by David (2):
“I had til recent times a nice NAD 320 amp, with B&W 601 speakers, CD player, FM/DAB tuner, with QED bi speaker cabling. Very nice, but here's the thing....
over time the quality of much cheaper equipment has got so much better. Those of us who were around in the 1980's will remember very sub standard Midi systems from people like Alba. The quality (and power, how does 2.5W total output grab you!) fell a long way short of proper hifi. In the 90's, Midi's did start to improve as long as you bought from Sony, Panasonic and the like but still a significant gap. Since 2000, quality has really taken of in this area. In circa 2003, i saw a Sony Mini HIFI (quite an expensive model) runnning and was quite suprised at how close it was to the NAD system I had......which is why a couple or three years ago I went down the same route, and got half the room back in the process.
.....If I were to go back to some thing like I had before, I wouldnt go for full size equipment at all, I understand Denon make, or made a compact hifi system, and thats the sort of thing I would go for.
I have to say though, bottom line, aside from the amp and speakers issue, plain old CD sounds clearer than mp3, even on a half decent mini hifi.”
It has, older hi-fi was very bulky and I suppose a lot of ladies would regard it as clutter. also, since then many people have disposed of their turntables, bulky items if only because of the size of the records.
This is the 1970s tuner amplifier I still use although it's 35 years old
http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/600/600page1.html
it still works and is very compact for the power output.
Another relic is a large and heavy CD player (Philips CD-104), rarely used now as all the CDs have been transferred to my computer.
I also remember an awful lot of snobbery around hi-fi 20 or 30 years ago. If you don't believe me, look out for a book "
Hi-Fi in the Home" (Gordon J King 1973), well written but it concentrates on classical music reproduction with hardly any mention of any other music. Don't forget the first stereo FM network was Radio 3, stereo didn't break out from the south east until 1973, Radio 1 only had very limited FM time until 1988. Around 1980, I remember one hi-fi magazine calling for the old Decca pressing plant to be retained (this was after Polygram had taken over the company), the reason being that high quality pressings were essential for classical music, but not for anything else.
Polygram transferred production to the plant they used for Philips & Polydor, I have plenty of records from there and they are fine.
The book got one prediction right, it predicted "
a system where listeners can access libraries of high quality music using the telephone system , which is essentially what we have now.