So What is Still Able to Compete?

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I'll bring my recently restored ADS L1590/2's to the competition and I'll bet they'll give some of the other speakers a serious run for the money.
 
Seriously..........do you guys really think 30+ year old all original equipment will compete with today's best?:rflmao:

I think the premise is if the 30 year old piece were new today compared to today's new technology. There was an interesting comparison on YouTube of a Yamaha CA-2010 compared to a new Yamaha A-S2100 and the CA-2010 went toe-to-toe with the 2100.
I don't believe the op would have suggested 30+ year old electronic components would be able to hold up against brand new.
I have done a direct comparison with a refurbed Yamaha CA-800 against a new Yamaha A-S500 and the difference was slim at best. I preferred the midrange of the 500 to the 800 but all else being equal the two were virtually identical.
That being said, yes I think old can compete quite well with new.:D
 
^^^^^^Those are both motl pieces at best. The original question asked was what old gear can compete with today's best gear. I know first hand that Mac's best from 40 years ago cannot compete with their best gear made today. This doesn't mean that old gear doesn't sound good but it has it's limitations. To say that old gear is better than 40-50 years of progress of a good engineering department to me is nonsense.
 
^^^^^^Those are both motl pieces at best. The original question asked was what old gear can compete with today's best gear. I know first hand that Mac's best from 40 years ago cannot compete with their best gear made today. This doesn't mean that old gear doesn't sound good but it has it's limitations. To say that old gear is better than 40-50 years of progress of a good engineering department to me is nonsense.
Would you say the differences reside somewhere in the margins, or are they more significant? Cost wise perhaps a case of diminishing returns?
 
^^^^^^Those are both motl pieces at best. The original question asked was what old gear can compete with today's best gear. I know first hand that Mac's best from 40 years ago cannot compete with their best gear made today. This doesn't mean that old gear doesn't sound good but it has it's limitations. To say that old gear is better than 40-50 years of progress of a good engineering department to me is nonsense.

SS, I agree. Mac tubes, I disagree.
 
Take a top-of-the-line Jadis-setup from around 1980 and it would bring you up about seven floors compared to anything made by the brands mentioned in the o.p.
 
Would you say the differences reside somewhere in the margins, or are they more significant? Cost wise perhaps a case of diminishing returns?
Imo the changes are not subtle and to me they're significant enough to spend that hard earned money and make the upgrade.
 
SS, I agree. Mac tubes, I disagree.
So you think the current production C22 takes a backseat to the original?

Edit; let me rephrase that question in staying with the op's original question. I highly doubt a current production C22 would be making it into a manufacturers high end offerings. So being that the original C22 was Mac's totl tube pre back in the day how would that original unit compare to say a C2500?
 
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So you think the current production C22 takes a backseat to the original?

Edit; let me rephrase that question in staying with the op's original question. I highly doubt a current production C22 would be making it into a manufacturers high end offerings. So being that the original C22 was Mac's totl tube pre back in the day how would that original unit compare to say a C2500?

My comment was directed more towards tube amps. I own a MC275 original commemorative (gold with numbered plate), pair MC75 amd pair MC60. In the past, I had a pair of MC275V's. I have a strong preference for tube rectified designs. I found the MC275's to be lifeless compared to my restored MC60's. As far as preamps go, I had a C2300 to go with the MC275V's. I also had a C20 on loan but not at the same time so no opportunity to compare.
 
As humans (we're all humans here, right??), our capacity to hear has certain limitations that cannot be overcome. The DIY-ers know this. The savvy vintage crowd knows this. The moron who buys the 5 figure price tag, 50kg+ turntable from the fancy store with shiny displays does not know this (*cough*Clearaudio*cough*).

There is a reason why the audio industry fears public ABX testing: in most areas of high fidelity audio reproduction (but not all), by the early 80s you're getting at or very close to the limits of human hearing, and its capacity to resolve the fidelity of audio reproduction.

I would argue that the list of vintage gear that still competes is a very long one. Some of it can be purchased very cheaply. If you are willing to blend old, new, pro and DIY gear, you can get cost-no-object performance for well under 10k USD. Personally, for my main stereo listening, I find I'm pretty damn close these days at a whopping price tag of what would be about 1500-1600 USD. Mind you, I buy second hand, and below market rate at that!

Go to any major high-end, cost-no-object audio store with a trade-in section. Go to their main listening room. Now they might have a set of very, very fine vintage speakers (particularly electrostatic or planar speakers) that have come in via trade-in. Maybe we're looking at a price tag of 2k-5k if the store is interested in offering fair market value used gear. Chances are, they're off to the side on the showroom floor, not plugged into anything. Maybe there's a little system going, but that's risky for the store. Above all, they wouldn't dare put those speakers in the main system room. It could mean ruin. As a buyer interested in the best of the best, why spend 50k when you can spend 2-5, and get something that's the same or better? Yes, better!

Let's think about what would happen if the retailers of modern cost-no-object gear put the finest vintage gear into the mix, side by side. The distributors of the new gear would get angry. The store would take a huge hit financially, even if their margins on trade-ins were decent. Some customers would turn away straight away and head right for the main second-hand market.

Areas in which modern gear has a distinct advantage that's potentially rather audible in an ABX context (let's say 1990 and beyond here):

--Floorstanding speaker performance below ~30hz (i.e. not particularly relevant for the vast majority of music listening).
--Bookshelf speaker performance below ~50hz.
--Subwoofers.
--Digital signal processing, and the corrective opportunities that it offers.
--AD / DA ICs themselves, which can yield excellent results when utilised in modified vintage pro DA & AD Converters / DATs

EDIT: I'll chuck digital audio playback and formats in there, though really 16bit 44.1khz is all you need, CD transport or lossless/FLAC. CD transports were rather sorted by the mid-90s.

I may have missed a thing or two overall, but for music listening that's about it. Yikes, long list! :rflmao:

If you're looking to buy: there's plenty of amazing gear from the 80s and 90s that goes for absolute peanuts. Happy to share my own set-up and make recommendations if there's interest.
 
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I know the original post was in regards to TOTL, but stepping down a bit and I would say, middle of the line gear would stand up, if not, sound better.

Take a a 1970s Pioneer SX-750 and put it up against a comparable priced Pioneer of today. The SX-750 will smoke the modern FPGA based receiver.
 
Let's imagine we are going to go to a show and in our hotel room we have to compete with VPI, KEF, Arcam, Marantz, Mark Levinson and McIntosh...

Our system needs to keep up with these guys...everyone wants to stand out...this is a show and we are on the same floor as these guys...

What are we building using equipment from the 50's to the 90s?

this one would get some attention.

Deuce-zilla_redux.jpg
 
I would argue that the list of vintage gear that still competes is a very long one. Some of it can be purchased very cheaply. If you are willing to blend old, new, pro and DIY gear, you can get cost-no-object performance for well under 10k USD.
Hey... you're talking about me! :)
Love the way you think. I feel the same. :beerchug: WELCOME TO AUDIOKARMA
 
Having been to a retail establishment just yesterday that sells new Mac I'd have to truthfully say that there's nothing I own would compete against their best system. My MC2500's put out about the same wpc as their MC1.2kw's in their reference rig but those quad balanced amps have 124db signal to noise ratio vs my 35 year old 2500's 95 snr. Even my 61 year old ears could easily hear that 30 db difference. The front end was equally as impressive and I wanted to think my rig could compete but in complete honesty there just isn't any way. That being said I still enjoy my rig and have no plans of upgrading it to that point but to say it'll hang with today's best gear is just silly talk.
 
I believe you motorstereo. But that new Mac... and Gryphon... and Nagra... and Goldmund... and Air Tight... how many people can afford to pay those prices?
 
I believe you motorstereo. But that new Mac... and Gryphon... and Nagra... and Goldmund... and Air Tight... how many people can afford to pay those prices?
Not I Audio Moon not I. Just the amps and 2 speakers alone were $70G:eek:. All the more power to the ones that can swing that kind of a system though as they must be out there.
 
Having been to a retail establishment just yesterday that sells new Mac I'd have to truthfully say that there's nothing I own would compete against their best system. My MC2500's put out about the same wpc as their MC1.2kw's in their reference rig but those quad balanced amps have 124db signal to noise ratio vs my 35 year old 2500's 95 snr. Even my 61 year old ears could easily hear that 30 db difference. The front end was equally as impressive and I wanted to think my rig could compete but in complete honesty there just isn't any way. That being said I still enjoy my rig and have no plans of upgrading it to that point but to say it'll hang with today's best gear is just silly talk.

Perhaps you've missed my point here. What I'm suggesting is certainly not "silly talk"; it's scientific. I hate to say it, but what you heard when you walked into an uncalibrated, non-level-matched listening envirnoment, where you AB tested equipment in an unscientific manner, simply doesn't constitute actual evidence. Beyond this, what's to say that your existing set-up is a reflection of that vintage gear out there which can accurately reproduce a source signal at the brink of or beyond the limits of human audibility? There is plenty of gear like this out there -- in fact, I've made a point of owning a whole bunch of it!

A topic like the one in this thread needs to be framed within the context of the capacity of humans to resolve sound. I think you'll find that when it comes to most types of audio reproduction equipment, these human limits to audibility were met or exceeded long ago by various vintage offerings.

Sure, newer cost-no-object systems may have superior specifications, but this is superfluous if those specifications are improvements that exist outside the realm of human audibility.
 
I believe you motorstereo. But that new Mac... and Gryphon... and Nagra... and Goldmund... and Air Tight... how many people can afford to pay those prices?

The funny thing is that the people buying such ridiculously priced gear could just have easily gone out and spent far less on vintage gear instead, which would have gotten them the same (or perhaps even better) level of fidelity with respect to signal amplification performance.

What's perhaps even funnier is that many high-end manufacturers of supposed 'high fidelity' audio equipment intentionally add tone controls (i.e. pleasant distortion) to the signal paths of their amplifiers.
 
^^^^^Having lived with my system over the years I know what's it's capabilities and limitations are. There's no doubt in my mind it is not capable of reproducing what I heard in the showroom KM. The 30db difference I mentioned was just one of very many areas my rig no doubt falls short. The background is quieter and the dynamics are greater coming from rooms that are similar in size. If you would like to believe that old gear with less than stellar specs will rival today's best then be my guest. I must admit I was hoping and speculating the same thing but my ears proved I was wrong.
 
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