RVT1K
Super Member
I believe that sums it up perfectly.
Big expensive quality amplifier market dead?
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I believe that sums it up perfectly.
There are lot of quality options for smaller budgets. A friend and I did a comparison between a Tandberg setup, a Bryston and Modified Hafler setup and a Wiim Amp Pro. All into a pair of Joseph Audio Pulsars.
The Bryston/Modified Hafler won the contest, but the Wiim was really good. Detailed and warm. Reminescent of Bel Canto. The Tandberg was not bad, and perhaps preferable to somewhat who values upper midrange presence.
I don't think you could go wrong with any of these choices.
The Bryston/Modified Hafler won the contest, but the Wiim was really good. Detailed and warm. Reminescent of Bel Canto. The Tandberg was not bad, and perhaps preferable to somewhat who values upper midrange presence.
I don't think you could go wrong with any of these choices.
JohnnieO
Active Member
I have one of those big heavy silver amps in my listening space but….i am thinking Fossil V3 monos and the 3 input Fossi preamp for a family room system. Add in a SMSL CD player plus a small tuner and that’s a complete little system for under $600 with mono blocks. Then add in some quality bookshelve speakers
The wife likes the small form factor as well
The wife likes the small form factor as well
IMO, it does not make sense spend money on larger, more expensive amps to include new and vintage components. I have less than $400 into the two Fosi ZA3s (includes swapping in a pair of MUSES02 op-amps) and a Fosi ZD3 in my 2.0 system. The total weight of these three components weighs less than 14.5 lbs. and this includes the weight of the power bricks. Without the power bricks the weight is just 9.5 lbs. The NAD 7600 receiver they replaced weighs 38 lbs. The total volume differences between the two systems are also very stark. The sound quality of my Fosi components are shockingly good. Now, if you want ear damaging listening levels above 90db then the smaller class D components might not be for you.
I saw an overpriced vintage Marantz 2250 yesterday on fb mp and I had to chuckle, shake my head in disbelief and be glad those days are behind me.
My Mac 4100 won the best of the vintage receivers comparison here and there were many contenders to fall by the wayside. Now that 4100 sits idle due to brand new Fosi balanced separates at about 1/3 of the 4100's cost.
I can only wonder how I would've spent that disposable cash if Fosi had come along several years earlier. Another motorcycle, a bigger boat or maybe I'd get sensible and add a bigger retirement cushion .
My Mac 4100 won the best of the vintage receivers comparison here and there were many contenders to fall by the wayside. Now that 4100 sits idle due to brand new Fosi balanced separates at about 1/3 of the 4100's cost.
I can only wonder how I would've spent that disposable cash if Fosi had come along several years earlier. Another motorcycle, a bigger boat or maybe I'd get sensible and add a bigger retirement cushion .
Tube
Transistor
Digital
There's simply an additional category of amplification (and hybrids of the categories)
Abovementioned brands produce amps in several of these categories of course.
I think it's fun to play with with all of it and find what works for you.
I also think that reviews need to be taken with a
And that measurements need to be thoroughly understood to interpret what the facts mean to you next to a lot of published measurements being unverifyable.
Still, things claimed in reviews can be interesting evidence.
Price is a different element.
There's cheap and cheerful and stratospherically expensive in all three categories.
Also money and audio to me is spend, not investment. This might differ to others of course.
It will be interesting to see what happens to the market in the next 10 years. My son is 21 and his generation is facing one of the worst job markets in the last 25+ years. The housing situation in the US is untenable with a severe lack of affordable housing. Food and other daily prices are exploding.
I was reading an article about small bars and listening venues closing all over America due to the fact that kids (young adults that is), can't afford to go out. Expensive drinks, expensive cover charges, and well - expensive everything means kids can't afford music entertainment outside of streaming on their phones and maybe smaller gear like Fosi.
My glass isn't 1/2 empty on the macro economics we're facing in the 21st century. It's about 15/16th empty. I think a lot of industries are going to take huge hit here in the next 20 years as vast swaths of the middle class are getting squeezed down into the lower end of economic life.
Big amps make sense for appropriate speakers in the appropriate space. But those spaces are getting harder and harder to come by for the next generation. And it makes me sad.
I was reading an article about small bars and listening venues closing all over America due to the fact that kids (young adults that is), can't afford to go out. Expensive drinks, expensive cover charges, and well - expensive everything means kids can't afford music entertainment outside of streaming on their phones and maybe smaller gear like Fosi.
My glass isn't 1/2 empty on the macro economics we're facing in the 21st century. It's about 15/16th empty. I think a lot of industries are going to take huge hit here in the next 20 years as vast swaths of the middle class are getting squeezed down into the lower end of economic life.
Big amps make sense for appropriate speakers in the appropriate space. But those spaces are getting harder and harder to come by for the next generation. And it makes me sad.
And, unlike '08 that was confined mostly to the US, this time around it's world wide.
Yea. Not good. Feels like how I image the world felt in the early 1930's. And that isn't good.....
I've never owned mono amplifiers; besides my bias for compact equipment, my limited auditioning history never heard an advantage to a mono pair over a single stereo amplifier. The most difficult speakers to drive I've ever owned were Linn Saras (4 Ohms nominal but with an impedance curve that dropped to nearly 2 Ohms), and Linn's own LK2 stereo amp (listed as a compact 10 1/4 in. W x 10 1/4 in. D X 3 in. H, from what I read online the later LK2/75 and LK280 were a couple inches wider) sounded as good or better to me than the mono amps in that particular store (maybe some Linn synergy going on).
These days, I'm an apartment dweller and keep volume, even peaks, to just a little over 60 dB, and I use the bass control to limit what little bass my tiny speakers are capable of so as not to disturb the neighbors that I share walls and floors with. My needs must be pretty much the opposite of what the OP has in mind, and I wonder what percent of the audio market those restrictions put me in.
Now at the bottom end of stereo shopping, I recently replaced a Bose Wave music system with SoundLink (about the same as Bluetooth, I think) with a pair of Cambridge Audio SX-50 speakers (an easy 8 Ohm load) and a cheap Sony STR-DH190 receiver. My audio rack's shelves are 19 1/2 X 18 inches, so anything up to that size will fit. I don't know what you consider too large, but the Sony is plenty small enough for me at 17" x 5-1/4" x 11-1/4" (and shipping was free).
There are no audio stores in the small town I live in, so all my research was online reviews and forum posts (I enjoyed reading your posts from 2022-2023 in which you transitioned to a class D fan!). I've never seen or heard a class D amplifier, but from what I read about amplification, class AB receivers and integrated amps seem to still be highly regarded for sound and features at the lower end of the market. In one box that needs just one power cord, my Sony gives me a Bluetooth receiver, an FM tuner, four line-level inputs, one output, one phono input, one front-mounted 3.5mm input jack, a headphone jack, and the ability to adjust volume, balance, bass, treble, input choice, radio tuning, and more from a handy remote control. Sounds good enough to get my toes tapping, too.
Could ask the same question of cars, jewelry, artwork, houses etc.. While the market for anything can ebb and flow, it'll never completely disappear.
If the question is whether the performance of expensive high-end equipment can be duplicated with gear costing a small fraction of the price, the answer is probably yes. But a Rolex isn't needed to keep accurate time any more than a Rolls for transportation.
If the question is whether the performance of expensive high-end equipment can be duplicated with gear costing a small fraction of the price, the answer is probably yes. But a Rolex isn't needed to keep accurate time any more than a Rolls for transportation.
Working in the audio industry, I can say most young people (or the next generation of consumers) just don't care as much as previous generations did about big, heavy and expensive HiFi as much as they do about BT, WiFi, smartphones and portability when it comes to audio. Most consumers of expensive audio equipment are usually older people that are are slowly dying out. Most see HiFi as a discretionary or luxury purchase that is non-essential.
That may change as they mature. I know in my case, I appreciate a lot of things that I couldn't have cared less about when I was a teen.
I sure hope so, but I'm not sure how those tides will turn given where we are today in the entertainment industry with what is prioritized, promoted or currently selling. For me, HiFi is "essential" and stereo reached its peak somewhere in the late 70's, early 80's. It seems most kids today have the attention span of a fruit fly and are looking for background music more than any active/ critical listening. We'll see. Here's to hoping!
Gigantic
A big, big love
It’s funny, as a child of the 70’s, growing up in the 80’s and coming of age in the 90’s, there hadn’t been a time for me when a HiFi wasn’t essential until I reached the 2010’s and had abandoned my HiFi altogether. Part of that reflects life changes, major illness and recovery, a career shift with a lot of travel and in retrospect, digitizing my rather expansive collection of +5k CDs and 400 or so vinyls led to me listening to music less, after the novelty wore off. It wasn’t until I opted to restore a pair of vintage speakers, that in turn led to building an increasingly more endgame-like system and reinvesting in physical media that led to a reawakening of and interest in listening to music again. I’ll also add that starting to play guitar again and write music a few years prior, led to an interest in something better to play it back and an interest in guitar gear led to new music discoveries, all steamrolling into building a proper HiFi and perhaps going a little overboard in the process.
There may be hope yet if the resurgence of vinyl is anything to go by. But the traditional dedicated 2-ch hi fi setup will probably never be as common as it was in the 70s.
I've been noticing more interest in 100/+ year old cars lately. At car shows, they almost never fail to draw a lot attention from the young and old alike. Even the oldest people alive today probably never saw them in regular use. At a recent auction, I saw a 1908 Cadillac sell for over $40,000 and it was a deteriorated older restoration.
I've been noticing more interest in 100/+ year old cars lately. At car shows, they almost never fail to draw a lot attention from the young and old alike. Even the oldest people alive today probably never saw them in regular use. At a recent auction, I saw a 1908 Cadillac sell for over $40,000 and it was a deteriorated older restoration.
sqlsavior
Lunatic Member
It's nice to be able get reference-quality sound amplification for $35. A Topping T-21 had all the imaging and clarity of my Luxman, but also had a slight edge, so a $200 Chi-Fi Class A amp is running the Quads now. ( https://audiokarma.org/forums/index...lh-1969-class-a-audio-amplifier-repro.794345/ ) Whether I get my $2500 tube amp fixed depends on future good fortune. It might have a little extra something that class A SS doesn't, I like to think. But, I'm not holding my breath. Just shipping it would be a project now.
JohnnieO
Active Member
I think I know the answer but what speakers do you have paired with your Fossi V3s? Probably JBLs….lol
Do you think a pair of large Advents would work well? I have those connected to a 10w Marantz 2010 and it’s just not working well. It’s OK but not great. I’m thinking a pair of V3s and the Fossi preamp. And possibly some better bookshelves on stands and sell the Marantz and Advents
Thoughts anyone?
@jrtrent I concur with the points you made above. I also own a pair of the Cambridge SX-50s that I used in a small office and held onto them because I thought they sounded so good for such a small footprint. Plenty of different paths to audio goodness but if I listened to something like a Fosi V3 stereo, available widely for much less than $100, or equivalent from the likes of Aiyima, driving the SX-50s I'd be happy long term.
In any event, when I first got back into audio ten years ago or so high quality amplification was almost always big, heavy, expensive and I always approached it as a problem to solve since I'm always on the lookout for value. These little boxes that perform at such high levels relative to shippability, lift-ability and cost, have 'solved' the problem for many of us. Thank goodness.
In any event, when I first got back into audio ten years ago or so high quality amplification was almost always big, heavy, expensive and I always approached it as a problem to solve since I'm always on the lookout for value. These little boxes that perform at such high levels relative to shippability, lift-ability and cost, have 'solved' the problem for many of us. Thank goodness.
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