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Vintage Asylum Classic gear from yesteryear; vintage audio standing the test of time. |
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Vintage Asylum Classic gear from yesteryear; vintage audio standing the test of time. |
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In Reply to: Vintage receivers with "hi-end" speakers? posted by Merle on March 5, 2003 at 05:33:44:
OK, dinner's over, so here's part 2. The 838 and 636 are both second generation designs from Pioneer, and should both be direct coupled on the output. In the preceding generation, the 727 and 828 were direct coupled designs, but the 626 was capacitively coupled and in fact, had the same power amplifier design as the earlier SX-990. Not all bad, but capacitively coupled designs do interface differently to the speakers than do direct coupled designs. As a general statement, capacitively coupled amps tend to have sweeter highs and looser bass, while the direct coupled amps seem to have sharper and brighter highs and tighter lows. Modern era speakers are generally voiced for use with direct coupled amps. So, your 838 and 636 should match the Shamrock and Cygnet very well, but probably with a trace of warmth that a modern amp would lack.As you could probably tell from my first post, I am not at all a fan of the "hype end". Partly because I don't believe it's an honest value for the money, and because I think it's based largely on lies, half truths, and a very cynical marketing approach. A con game. The 70's vintage stuff that is the real "meat" of this forum was made to sell, but by and large it was pretty honest stuff and well designed by men who cared, who had sound professional credentials, and who really tried to produce high performance gear at a fair price. Americans or Japanese, it made no difference. And for the most part, their efforts have stood the test of time.
In my first post I asked you to kick back and enjoy the music. Wjhy did I say this? Because the "hype end" uses the same FUD that IBM used to. FUD stood for Fear, Unease, Distrust! Inb the high end, the advertising is set up to make you feel uneasy about what you have, to feel what you have is superceded and inadequate, to want more and better, to be constantly upgrading. The high end is a very limited and steadily shrinking market and they rely heavily on repeat sales to existing customers. The whole pitch is that what you bought last year is nowhere near as good as this year's version. Vintage is the total opposite. Our belief is that it was as good as it was going to get about 30 years ago, and in many cases it has moved backward.
Now for a case in point. My son-in-law is into speaker building in a very sophisticated way. He recently built a pair of Dennis Murphy designed MB-1's (same drivers and sound as the GR Research AV-1). Guess what? They sound exactly like my double Advents down to about 70-80 Hz. In a head to head test, the other 2 guys kept asking me "which ones are playing now?" I had control of the speaker switching, but I had to look to be sure. The MB-1's are ruler flat from 200 Hz to 20 kHz and use the latest crossover design theory. They are just as sophisticated as your Shamrock's. They also work just fine with my elderly Onkyo receiver. As I said earlier. Stop worrying and enjoy the music.
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Follow Ups
- Re: Vintage receivers with "hi-end" speakers? - Bold Eagle 03/5/0318:17:24 03/5/03 (0)
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