Audio life style change

airtime said:
I plan on trying one of those amps soon. Just to see what all the fuss is about with Class D. I've had a few Class D amps in the past but that was well over 10 years ago. I'm sure things have changed a bit since then.
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It seems that the game changer for the SQ from the recent class D amps is the TI 3255 amp chip they use. What impressed me with the ZA3 is its transparency. It takes whatever is fed to it and reproduces it faithfully without any embellishments. Adding the DAC does about the same thing in what it passes through to the amp. As of now I don't use tone controls at all except for a software based EQ program for the computer. Even then, the only slider I have adjusted is a slight boost at 31hz to give the L100t3s a little more low end bass past their rated 35hz bottom. I feel like I am hearing music, for the most part, as the original sound engineer intended.

The crazy thing is that these newer budget class D amps have only been out for less than two years. The 2-3 biggest players in this market are producing new improved products at a fast pace. Especially Fosi and AIYIMA but, IMO, Fosi is a little better than AIYIMA at the moment. In another 1-2 years I think they will be producing components that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago regarding price versus performance. Fosi just came out with a DAC for under $150 (includes discount) that has balanced outputs and HDMI ARC, coax, optical, bluetooth and USB inputs. Plus, it has a remote control, volume adjustment capability and a nice LED display. So far, it has mostly received very solid reviews. Also, many of these newer class D amps can be set to run in mono mode (the Fosi V3 Mono is fulltime mono) which makes it very easy to economically run a dual mono setup.
 
airtime said:
Back in the 80

Back through the 80's through to somewhere in the early 2000's, SS had yet to work out the finesse in its tonal quality. Newer designs have captured the tonal quality. I no longer feel that I have to turn to my tube amps for that.
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Ok, best of luck luck in your journey. Life's too short to worry about gear instead of enjoying the music.
 
maxhifi said:
Because trading a lifetime of hobby activity and knowledge acquisition for an off the shelf appliance, no matter how good it is, isn't the least bit fulfilling. Ask yourself honestly, is your hobby really listening to music, or is it listening to music and fiddling around with gear?
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I stared out with audio doing rebuilding and repairing of old stereos. It was a only a hobby only as I am in no way a tech. But at the end of the day it was about listening to music. Now that I no longer wish to be doing repairs, I find myself preferring to listen and NOT repair.
 
airtime said:
I stared out with audio doing rebuilding and repairing of old stereos. It was a only a hobby only as I am in no way a tech. But at the end of the day it was about listening to music. Now that I no longer wish to be doing repairs, I find myself preferring to listen and NOT repair.
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In this case, awesome! My system is a mix of newer and vintageish, but it's mostly a money thing. I couldn't afford to buy all my stuff new.
 
FiddlerBeeps said:
Some audiophiles reach a point where practicality wins them over. That doesn't mean our OCD love of tweaking things goes out the window. It just means our threshold for "that's good enough" has dropped a notch or three.

Other audiophiles continue in their quest for perfection.
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For me, audio as a hobby, competes with other hobbies I enjoy for my time and money. Also, enjoying music is mostly a sedentary process which I can only partake in for so long before I need to get up and do something more physical. As a rule regarding my hobbies, I don't get wrapped up in a quest for achieving perfection or anywhere close to perfection. IMO, this is a waste of my time and resources. Modding cars is my most enjoyed hobby but even here I have learned that having more than 450-500 rwhp is a waste of time and money for a car that isn't dedicated for track use.

I am not denigrating anyone who wants to pursue perfection to the extreme. This just isn't something I care to do because I find doing so is a frustrating, boring and unnecessarily costly process. For audio, I like to get the best bang for my buck that gets me to where I want to be regarding SQ. I will go for several years being satisfied with my audio gear and then will find that technology advances, or an exceptional deal crosses my path, and makes an addition/swap worth doing. This year I went down the newer class D amp rabbit hole and found it was a good bit better than the older components I have been using. I replaced my older stuff with the newer stuff and will buy a few more new components and then coast and enjoy this system for a several years.
 
airtime said:
There was a point where I had stereos in the garage, closets, under the bed, stacked in a rack, etc.... What really clinched it for me was when I started to take an inventory of the ones that need repairs, restoration and ones that had unobtainable parts. They all had to go.

I'm down to one vintage amp, my fully restored Marantz 250m. And even that I sometimes look at like, "why am I holding onto this"?
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Your experience sounds like mine.Closets,under the bed,garage.I think I had sixty amps and receivers.I think it is just a process and reaching a point where enough is enough. Never started out to be a collector or wanted to be and sold many along the way and one day I finally realized where I was at and said " what the Hell was I thinking?"
 
OldJBL said:
It seems that the game changer for the SQ from the recent class D amps is the TI 3255 amp chip they use. What impressed me with the ZA3 is its transparency. It takes whatever is fed to it and reproduces it faithfully without any embellishments. Adding the DAC does about the same thing in what it passes through to the amp. As of now I don't use tone controls at all except for a software based EQ program for the computer. Even then, the only slider I have adjusted is a slight boost at 31hz to give the L100t3s a little more low end bass past their rated 35hz bottom. I feel like I am hearing music, for the most part, as the original sound engineer intended.

The crazy thing is that these newer budget class D amps have only been out for less than two years. The 2-3 biggest players in this market are producing new improved products at a fast pace. Especially Fosi and AIYIMA but, IMO, Fosi is a little better than AIYIMA at the moment. In another 1-2 years I think they will be producing components that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago regarding price versus performance. Fosi just came out with a DAC for under $150 (includes discount) that has balanced outputs and HDMI ARC, coax, optical, bluetooth and USB inputs. Plus, it has a remote control, volume adjustment capability and a nice LED display. So far, it has mostly received very solid reviews. Also, many of these newer class D amps can be set to run in mono mode (the Fosi V3 Mono is fulltime mono) which makes it very easy to economically run a dual mono setup.
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I’m amazed with them, do much that I’m running four of them in mono with Burson and Sparkos op amps in them. That DAC may have been a game changer for me if it had come out a couple years ago, but I’m happy where I’ve ended up.
 
superdog said:
Your experience sounds like mine.Closets,under the bed,garage.I think I had sixty amps and receivers.I think it is just a process and reaching a point where enough is enough. Never started out to be a collector or wanted to be and sold many along the way and one day I finally realized where I was at and said " what the Hell was I thinking?"
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Exactly, I never set out in audio to be collector. But something happens along the way when you can buy a Sansui for $30. I must have had my hands on well over a hundred stereos. When I see videos on youtube on vintage gear I'm amazed at how many of those pieces I owned at one time or another.

I'm at the point where I need one great sounding easy to use main system. One SS back up, one vintage amp and one tube amp. That's about it.
 
Mr Boochie said:
It's hard to give up on something that has been so good to you, for so many years.
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It's harder to realize that there really is better.

An example is that my Marantz WAS one of the best amps for decades. Now it's nostalgic. It's no different than starting with a 1940's radio and buying a 1990's stereo. 50 years is a big gap in technology and designs.
 
airtime said:
It's harder to realize that there really is better.

An example is that my Marantz WAS one of the best amps for decades. Now it's nostalgic. It's no different than starting with a 1940's radio and buying a 1990's stereo. 50 years is a big gap in technology and designs.
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That's actually a good comparison. And the hobby of collecting vintage audio is actually very similar to old guys restoring and collecting Philco or RCA tube radios back in the 80s and 90s.

I don't agree though that the Marantz was one of the best amps for decades. maybe your best amp, but in general? No way. There's been progress every decade, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, 2010s, etc. The main advantage of vintage aside from nostalgia has always been cost... it was literally pennies on the dollar, and represented very good economic value compared to new gear.
 
RVT1K said:
It was hard to watch my RC51 go away.
But I choose to focus on all the amazing times I had on it and not that I no longer have it.
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You hit a bone after I read this!
I went thru the same thing when I sold my house and moved to Florida several years ago. My wife and I both rode for years. We decided it was time to stop riding and sold her bike first, a Suzuki GS1100 GL, but it took me forever to finally list mine for sale, a Honda VFR800FI Interceptor. I felt like living a few more years. LOL
 
I can sympathize with OP on this. The new gear, as convenient as it may be, still doesn't really do it for me. But it's also getting harder to find parts for vintage systems, and FM radio (at least in this area) is full of compressed junk and interference from various modern devices and HD radio.

It was always appealing to listen to an AM or SW station from across the country or world at night. Now it can very easily be done on a smart phone, but somehow the magic of doing that isn't there. Same with FM, wondering what they'd play next. They played what they wanted, no corporate playlists. Commercials were not as obnoxious, and there were fewer of them. Now I can load Spotify and play what I want. But I kinda liked when a DJ would introduce me to music. Spotify introduces me to music, but it thinks I'm a 20 year old rapper. What happened to the beautiful music format?

I sometimes want those days back (ignoring their unique challenges), but am slowly accepting that they are mostly gone. Most people these days only have a basic smart speaker or a sound bar for music.
 
I gave up on vintage several years ago and have absolutely zero regrets. That interest was informative and provided valuable experience but progress is a good thing. High quality streaming has replaced local FM and to a lesser extent CD and vinyl. In order to get the best out of streaming you need current equipment. Yes vintage amplifiers can be incorporated into the process but there’s no real reason to when quality gear is readily available.

Reliability and the convenience of a remote defeats the nostalgia factor by a wide margin, at least for me.
 
cq.ab0nf said:
I can sympathize with OP on this. The new gear, as convenient as it may be, still doesn't really do it for me. But it's also getting harder to find parts for vintage systems, and FM radio (at least in this area) is full of compressed junk and interference from various modern devices and HD radio.

It was always appealing to listen to an AM or SW station from across the country or world at night. Now it can very easily be done on a smart phone, but somehow the magic of doing that isn't there. Same with FM, wondering what they'd play next. They played what they wanted, no corporate playlists. Commercials were not as obnoxious, and there were fewer of them. Now I can load Spotify and play what I want. But I kinda liked when a DJ would introduce me to music. Spotify introduces me to music, but it thinks I'm a 20 year old rapper. What happened to the beautiful music format?

I sometimes want those days back (ignoring their unique challenges), but am slowly accepting that they are mostly gone. Most people these days only have a basic smart speaker or a sound bar for music.
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One of the factors that started the move away from vintage was the death of FM. We had two military bases, an illegal FM station in town and a truck yard causing a lot of problems. Finally, my last listenable FM station changed format. That was in 2010 when I switched to streaming. If you can believe it, I was the first person on my audio group to try out streaming. At that time I took a lot of crap. Wow, have times changed.

So streaming switching from tuners to streaming has opened up an entirely new listening life in my situation. Now I see using newer amps is only adding more to it.
 
prisoners said:
I gave up on vintage several years ago and have absolutely zero regrets. That interest was informative and provided valuable experience but progress is a good thing. High quality streaming has replaced local FM and to a lesser extent CD and vinyl. In order to get the best out of streaming you need current equipment. Yes vintage amplifiers can be incorporated into the process but there’s no real reason to when quality gear is readily available.

Reliability and the convenience of a remote defeats the nostalgia factor by a wide margin, at least for me.
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My experience with vintage has been great including the sta2080 I bought new in 1981 never had any service other than I cleaned it once ! Even the bulbs are original . The other vintage units I picked up some for free some for Pennys on the dollar after they were gone thru they been great ! I think 2 things give vintage a bad rap , one buying units on eBay or thrift stores that have been abused and the second not having the right tech or the ability to fix it your self ! My sta2080 a 4 gang tuner good phono amps a clean amp
80 wpc .03 % my carver 140 wpc .05 sta2290 100 wpc .05% my Mac 55 wpc .05 all respectable specs and all work well ! Yes I do like a lot of the new gear but what I have works good for me your results may very but not all vintage equipment is problematic not all new is gold !
 
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