Aside from my speakers my audio system represents really good stuff for the late 1970′s to 1980′s. The stuff of that era was not bad by today's standards, and is much better than consumer grade equipment of any era. Some of these devices are collectable and that creates an artificial value for them.
Almost all the best stuff from then is now considered not that good now, or at least far surpassed. For several years the Audio Research SP3a1 was the best. Several reviewers called it a straight wire with gain and it reigned from on high. Today it is far less than that. The RIAA phono equalization curve was off significantly which made it sound like many people expected a good thing to sound.
The SP3a1 is valuable as a collectors item. I am sure the owners enjoy it.
Actually to that point last night I was listening to a Decca London recording from the 60′s and parts of that sounded brilliant other parts were crap. The RIAA standard phono curve is an equalization put on vinyl records for various good reasons. It is an extreme cut in the bass and a boost of the highs going into the vinyl and a boost of the bass and cut in the highs coming off. Thing is up to the 1970′s it was not an actual standard. I think that the recording I had was from before RIAA was adopted in the UK and that caused the full orchestra to go weird.
It was a London Geshwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. The Clarinet and Piano were really nice. The full orchestra strings were shit. This was a “Phase 4″ recording mixed down from 20 mike channels and that may also have been the problem.
Anyway all of my electronics date from the designs of 1970′s to mid 1980′s. This was the peak era of tube versus transistor wars and the fundamental questions of what is good, and who should decide. They were all considered good stuff then.
Stock version of my Dynaco 400 amp was a solid second then third tier machine with real or imagined flaws compared to the top tier. In that time powerful amplifiers were just becoming possible.
In the early 1970′s the best transistor amps were 60 watts per channel such as the HK Citation 12. That is a lovely design with basically two completely separate monophonic amplifiers in one metal case. I have one. If you find one in working order it is a nice machine. They are repairable if sick. For a short while it was the best in several rankings. Transistors were popular as they solved a lot of problems with tube amps specifically a lack of bass in available speakers.
Then tube amps struck back with more power by adding ranks of tubes and the discovery that more power sounds better. Power is determined by volts times amps. In tubes it is easy to drive volts by adjusting the output transformers as the circuit already had lots of volts. Chaining together ranks of output tubes was fairly easy to get amps.
In transistors the output devices are basically attached directly to the speakers and they had not yet made available higher voltage transistors. When those happened so did 200 and 350 Watts per channel machines. When you listen to music at orchestral levels you are averaging maybe 2 to 5 Watts, but peaks are many times that. The peaks are the key advantage with big amps.
A trumpet is capable of 130 db. A quiet room is say 40 db. The difference is 90 db which corresponds to a power ratio of 1,000,000,000 times. That is way more than even a huge amplifier. But if you want the impact of a big drum you need as much power as you can get. There are limits in that if you actually could get that many Watts it would probably liquefy your brain sometime after you went deaf.
Actually 90 db far exceeds the dynamic range of vinyl but is within the theoretical capability of CD and lossless digital with enough bits.
But more power sounds better. The more pedestrian advice is buy the biggest amp you speakers are rated for. I ignore that. I have the biggest amp I could build and hope that I do not drop anything that makes my speakers smoke. I do not use fuses even. Making my electrons march down skinny wires that get warm is a compromise. I have been 40 years lucky to not cook any speakers yet.
Tubes are expensive and fragile so adding more and more is very expensive. That was the fundamental battle.
I have had good tube amplifiers and enjoyed them, but they do have a voice and there are compromises. It all boils down to compromises.
If you chase numbers and specifications and that is all I feel sorry for you. For myself I understand the limits of such and you have to restrain yourself. I like listening to music I have owned for decades and hear new things, or at least things as I remember them. I am amazed that I can listen to a recording I have not heard for 30 years and remember every song.
Last night I dusted of Ian Thomas’ “Glider” a strange and beautiful record. The sound was amazing and clear and I truly enjoyed it with my old machines.
The battles are far from over and now include Mosfets and class A Amps in transistors and tube triodes and many other things. Switching amps are interesting and theoretically very capable. Those are often called Class D with the D taken as digital, though there are not really that.
It is fun that many classic expensive designs can be bought as kits from China as patents and copyrights have expired. I will troll those places and wonder if I really want one of those. I like to build things. Then I put on a record and relax.
Anyway it is interesting but you have to remember that this is all about enjoying the music.
Sony 2251 la turntable with a grace 707 arm and a Signet TK7E and a tweaked mat.
SAE MK 30 (III) preamp ( AR SP12 is sick)
Dynaco 416 black box tweaked as detailed on an earlier post.
Ordinary heavy gauge wires.
Funky Speakers that I designed and built based on concepts developed in the 1970s by Mr. Carlsson.
