Sarel.wagner
Well-known member
Sitting here, contemplating stuff, funny how this goes. A few observations if you will, my personal views….
Vintage or modern, expensive vs cheap in price not value, analog vs digital, class A vs AB vs D, cable jewellery vs copper draad, tape vs vinyl, tubes vs transistors, CD vs streaming, electrostatic speakers vs pistonic type speakers and the list goes on and on and on…. Pick any combination you like, it’s always versus.
Some people throw money at the problem, some upgrade all the time. Some people have the ability to DIY out a solution. Everybody is seeking the ultimate for themselves when it gets to HiFi. Few people, a very few has found what they are happy with. If you read the forums, there is a lot of discontent and I think some of this stems from the obsession with gear. Higher and higher performance equipment, cables and sources to be able to reproduce music.
Then again, some people just listen to and enjoy the music, other the gear. I am a kind of draadsitter here. Let me elaborate. When listening to music, I do not want to listen to obvious faults like a voice coil rubbing or distortion, it detracts from my enjoyment. I do not want to hear the gear, just the music. When repairing/restoring gear, I do the exact opposite.
It’s like the interface to the music, the gear. Most modern equipment use some remote control, the pinnacle of convenience. Man, in 99% of the cases, it is a mass produce piece of plastic with bleh action on the buttons, or touch screen with zero tactile abilities. I recall fondly HP calculators of old, and pc keyboards…. Convenience wins it seems. But then again I enjoy the ritual of my old equipment, you have to get up and change the LP, swap the tape, change the volume etc. The ritual is part of the listening, altho cleaning LP’s I don’t enjoy. I do have new remote controlled stuff, but just like modern cars, they work but there is no connection. It’s like the teeny tiny buttons and screens adorning all modern things, you have to read and comprehend to know what the settings are. Like the rotary encoder with no markings, round and round it goes, no feedback, no LED indicating where in the 270 degree arc the volume is set to, since there is no stop, no arc to traverse and no set the volume to 11….
When it gets to enjoying the equipment for the sake of using it as the interface to music, gimme big knobs and clear markings and a detent if needed. Gimme a volume control that is silky smooth with clear feedback and oh a joy to fiddle with, something with heft but controllable. What happened to VU meters, or a tuning dial, nada and all in the mind of cost savings and programability, forget usability. Hem knows just wobble about and ya afraid to touch it as it feels like falling off, and that is not just on cheap gear. I am aware that on some not so cheap ger you get better, but on some just the same. And add to subtracting a few steps a few times a day to not get up and walk over there. Sold in droves….
Microcontrollers in everything, they cheap. So follow displays, tiny things that cannot be read from over there anyhow. The throw away culture since nobody bothers with schematics for anything past about the 90s, so no repairs either. Just buy a new one when the old one breaks a week past it’s warranty, just to make money, the planned obsolescence culture. Well us humans I guess suffers from planned obsolescence as well, in death.
More than half of my enjoyment in a strange way, stems from my orphaned equipment resurrected after being ousted as obsolete or not working and abandoned. I have a workshop full of test gear that was rescued and repaired, mostly old valve test gear and early transistor stuff. Same for a lot of HiFi gear, old and mostly 50s to 80s vintage, old classics. The sweet taste of success in fixing an orphan, it creates an emotional response.
VintagemyselfGroetnis
Vintage or modern, expensive vs cheap in price not value, analog vs digital, class A vs AB vs D, cable jewellery vs copper draad, tape vs vinyl, tubes vs transistors, CD vs streaming, electrostatic speakers vs pistonic type speakers and the list goes on and on and on…. Pick any combination you like, it’s always versus.
Some people throw money at the problem, some upgrade all the time. Some people have the ability to DIY out a solution. Everybody is seeking the ultimate for themselves when it gets to HiFi. Few people, a very few has found what they are happy with. If you read the forums, there is a lot of discontent and I think some of this stems from the obsession with gear. Higher and higher performance equipment, cables and sources to be able to reproduce music.
Then again, some people just listen to and enjoy the music, other the gear. I am a kind of draadsitter here. Let me elaborate. When listening to music, I do not want to listen to obvious faults like a voice coil rubbing or distortion, it detracts from my enjoyment. I do not want to hear the gear, just the music. When repairing/restoring gear, I do the exact opposite.
It’s like the interface to the music, the gear. Most modern equipment use some remote control, the pinnacle of convenience. Man, in 99% of the cases, it is a mass produce piece of plastic with bleh action on the buttons, or touch screen with zero tactile abilities. I recall fondly HP calculators of old, and pc keyboards…. Convenience wins it seems. But then again I enjoy the ritual of my old equipment, you have to get up and change the LP, swap the tape, change the volume etc. The ritual is part of the listening, altho cleaning LP’s I don’t enjoy. I do have new remote controlled stuff, but just like modern cars, they work but there is no connection. It’s like the teeny tiny buttons and screens adorning all modern things, you have to read and comprehend to know what the settings are. Like the rotary encoder with no markings, round and round it goes, no feedback, no LED indicating where in the 270 degree arc the volume is set to, since there is no stop, no arc to traverse and no set the volume to 11….
When it gets to enjoying the equipment for the sake of using it as the interface to music, gimme big knobs and clear markings and a detent if needed. Gimme a volume control that is silky smooth with clear feedback and oh a joy to fiddle with, something with heft but controllable. What happened to VU meters, or a tuning dial, nada and all in the mind of cost savings and programability, forget usability. Hem knows just wobble about and ya afraid to touch it as it feels like falling off, and that is not just on cheap gear. I am aware that on some not so cheap ger you get better, but on some just the same. And add to subtracting a few steps a few times a day to not get up and walk over there. Sold in droves….
Microcontrollers in everything, they cheap. So follow displays, tiny things that cannot be read from over there anyhow. The throw away culture since nobody bothers with schematics for anything past about the 90s, so no repairs either. Just buy a new one when the old one breaks a week past it’s warranty, just to make money, the planned obsolescence culture. Well us humans I guess suffers from planned obsolescence as well, in death.
More than half of my enjoyment in a strange way, stems from my orphaned equipment resurrected after being ousted as obsolete or not working and abandoned. I have a workshop full of test gear that was rescued and repaired, mostly old valve test gear and early transistor stuff. Same for a lot of HiFi gear, old and mostly 50s to 80s vintage, old classics. The sweet taste of success in fixing an orphan, it creates an emotional response.
VintagemyselfGroetnis