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The Great DEBATE - Which are better, new ones or oldies?

quadklipsh

quadklipsh

Super Member
guys , i have a friend here who is arguing with me that why am i browsing old vintage amps , when new are available that are much better .
i have marantz 1060 , pm 94 and pm 8 , 1300 dc and the esotec amps as my top favourites so far .
i also have the musical fidelity A1 and the DIATONE DA A7 MITSUBISHI amps.
I also have the yamaha A 2000 which is a TITANIC of an amplifier .......and i have some other denons to my liking too
. im in love with the sound of an oldy goldy QUAD 303, with its 33 preamp .
it sounds smooth and clearer than i can ever imagine with my newer amps, which have nothing much to offer but power only .

what is the general consensus here ?????
are oldies that i mentioned upstairs ,superior to the newer ones or am i wrong altogether .
and yes price should be considered before comparing any old vs new !!!!


so plz chime in , as i told him ill get input soon ......
 
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who ROCKS ???? VINTAGE or LATEST AMPS ????

guys , i have a friend here who is arguing with me that why am i browsing old vintage amps , when new are available that are much better .
i have marantz 1060 , pm 94 and pm 8 , 1300 dc and the esotec amps as my top favourites so far .
i also have the musical fidelity A1 and the DIATONE DA A7 MITSUBISHI amps.
I also have the yamaha A 2000 which is a TITANIC of an amplifier .......and i have some other denons to my liking too
. im in love with the sound of an oldy goldy QUAD 303, with its 33 preamp .
it sounds smooth and clearer than i can ever imagine with my newer amps, which have nothing much to offer but power only .

what is the general consensus here ?????
are oldies that i mentioned upstairs ,superior to the newer ones or am i wrong altogether .
and yes price should be considered before comparing any old vs new !!!!


so plz chime in , as i told him ill get input soon ......
 
You can't make a distinction like this. There is no 'best'.

Old, new- it doesn't really matter. There are great examples of both. The best new amps are usually much more expensive than older amps. But something just being old does NOT make it good, though I've heard that said on this forum. At the same time, something being new doesn't make it automatically better, either. The quality of any given piece of gear can only be taken for that one unit. Generalizations based on when something was made say more to me about the person making the judgment than the gear itself.

My personal sweet-spot for my main system was a used, newer, amp from around 2006. It sounds better than anything older or new I've heard. But my other two systems have amps from 1980, and the sixties, respectively.
 
OLD OR NEW for a SUPERIOR SOUND plzzz?????

guys , i have a friend here who is arguing with me that why am i browsing old vintage amps , when new are available that are much better .
i have marantz 1060 , pm 94 and pm 8 , 1300 dc and the esotec amps as my top favourites so far .
i also have the musical fidelity A1 and the DIATONE DA A7 MITSUBISHI amps.
I also have the yamaha A 2000 which is a TITANIC of an amplifier .......and i have some other denons to my liking too
. im in love with the sound of an oldy goldy QUAD 303, with its 33 preamp .
it sounds smooth and clearer than i can ever imagine with my newer amps, which have nothing much to offer but power only .

what is the general consensus here ?????
are oldies that i mentioned upstairs ,superior to the newer ones or am i wrong altogether .
and yes price should be considered before comparing any old vs new !!!!


so plz chime in , as i told him ill get input soon ......
 
BTW- if you are just wondering about the Marantz gear, the current reference series is absolutely top-notch.
 
Learn how to type complete sentences with correct punctuation and stop duplicating your posts, please. Nobody wants to talk about this anyway. It's been beaten to death. Amps that are good are good.
 
Yin/Yang response:

Old vs new is a relative thing. For instance, in 1974, I purchased a 'used' McIntosh MX-110 tube preamp/tuner. At the time, it was considered quite passe, given that good, stable (and what we now call vintage) solid state receivers were becoming well-priced and had far better measured specs than all that old, hot, prone-to-failure tube gear.

So, if you had asked the same questions back then, you'd get different answers than you would today, I suspect.

Frankly, there is some _very_ good gear being made today. For instance, McIntosh has a complete line of both solid state and tube gear. All of it inter-operates with each other and all of it can still be connected to most anything made 40 years ago.

This allows both you and your friend to pick and choose, at whatever price point you have, and to mix/match. That's a nice hobby to have, IMHO. What's wrong with this picture?

Cheers,

David
 
What exactly is the purpose of the input you receive? Are you making a purchase or trying to win an argument with your friend? If you want a true consensus of the audio world, you'd have to ask more than AK. The membership here is decidedly in favor of vintage gear, but that is not the case for every audio forum. Judging the world of audio based on one small picture of it is not going to tell you what is truly going on. The best way is to own a broad measure of the gear yourself- if you want to compare, buy a Marantz Reference amp made in the last year, and put it up against your Esotec stuff. You might just come to the conclusion that good gear is good gear.
 
JohnVF said:
What exactly is the purpose of the input you receive? Are you making a purchase or trying to win an argument with your friend?
Click to expand...


yup . its an argument id like to win .
i wana know if latest stuff is better than the best of the 60-70s stuff , be it audio or any other field ..

though i got the overall impression fom hundreds of posts through many forums that many hi end stuff of the past was still comparable to 5 times costlier stuff of today.

newer stuff is usually better off . ofcourse more research and component superiority would put the newer gear in a better place . but when it comes to sound , i guess my ears prefer the good old gears .
 
quadklipsh said:
[
though i got the overall impression fom hundreds of posts through many forums that many hi end stuff of the past was still comparable to 5 times costlier stuff of today...

... but when it comes to sound , i guess my ears prefer the good old gears .
Click to expand...

Then here is surely the best stuff!

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I think, paying the same amount, adjusted for inflation, you get about the same quality.

My Pioneer SA-9500 II listed for $450 back in 1978 and sold for about $375.

Adjusted for inflation, that would mean spending ~$1575 list or about $1300 out the door. There are a lot of very good amplifiers out there today for that much money.

Ditto for my Pioneer A-88X which listed for $700 in 1986. The equivalent level of sound today would still be ~$1500

Both were pretty much top of the line integrated Pioneers.


The main difference, I paid $200 for each of my amps, not $1500. Even with the price of a re-cap should I choose to have one, I am way ahead.

In that way older is better, but otherwise, they are all designed for a single purpose, to recreate the sound of music as transparently and pleasantly as they can. I doubt you would find very much from which to choose between the old and the new aside from some designed in tonal qualities for which each brand was famous.

Just my 2cents.


:music:Will
 
JohnVF said:
What exactly is the purpose of the input you receive? Are you making a purchase or trying to win an argument with your friend?
Click to expand...
quadklipsh said:
yup . its an argument id like to win .
i wana know if latest stuff is better than the best of the 60-70s stuff , be it audio or any other field ..

though i got the overall impression fom hundreds of posts through many forums that many hi end stuff of the past was still comparable to 5 times costlier stuff of today.

newer stuff is usually better off . ofcourse more research and component superiority would put the newer gear in a better place . but when it comes to sound , i guess my ears prefer the good old gears .
Click to expand...

Well, in that case I think you're both wrong :) Good gear is good gear.
 
certainly component parts are better in some ways today,measurement tools are better and what those measurements say is perhaps somewhat better understood...but amplifiers are really a pretty mature technology,sure there are some that push this or that new or different circuitry or feature,but the vast majority of designs are more alike than different...be it new or 20-30 years old..LF audio amplifiers aren't exactly rocket science from an engineering point of view...
 
quadklipsh said:
newer stuff is usually better off . ofcourse more research and component superiority would put the newer gear in a better place . but when it comes to sound , i guess my ears prefer the good old gears .
Click to expand...

I'd be curious what newer gear you've listened to and how it compares to your vintage gear.
 
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