ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
I tend to play digital files and Internet radio through the tape inputs on older Beomaster systems with Beovox speakers. The results are remarkably clear with great channel separation etc.
It made me think how much better our modern sound sources are than those old amplifier systems that claimed very low distortion etc, but usually were either playing a from a turntable with lots of rumble wow and flutter, or, unless you were close to a transmitter, those not too reliable FM stereo broadcasts.
The biggest issue now seems to be recordings that are flat and loud with no subtlety in how they've been recorded.
As the broadcasts and other sources have improved, manufacturers like B&O have had less to do in trying to get good sound from, for example, vinyl or tape and their associated imperfect technologies. The more I think about it, the more I think B&O should focus on speaker performance for the future.
Graham
I suppose I would debate whether sources are any better - DAB rather than FM, MP3 versus LP. i cannot say that I find newer systems any better - if anything the reverse. However cheap systems seem to be a lot better sonically, but far worse ergonomically!
Peter
If you've spent any time listening to old technology hifi systems, you will know they can sound very, very good, and many give up little to nothing from newer stuff. Good has gotten cheaper though as Peter said.
Remember that an awful lot of what passes for "revolutionary improvements" are not so much done for real sonic reasons as for marketing. This is especially true of speaker driver materials, i.e. metal tweeters and rigid cones. Often they have a theoretical advantage that does not show up in listening, and often sound markedly worse due to new problems. Ditto the big push in the 70's with ultra low THD numbers for amps that were obtained with massive amounts of global feedback resulting in truly awful TIM.
Live listened to very old horn systems driven by ancient tube gear that sounded so good they bring up goosebumps, and thoroughly modern, allegedly state of the art systems that would have you running from the room with your fingers jammed in your ears. You can find audio ranging from awful to wonderful regardless of the age of the tech, it's all in the implementation.
Jeff
I'm afraid I'm recovering from the BeoVirus.
1. Computer modeling and more precise testing has made it possible to achieve higher levels of performance at lower price points.
2. BUT - mobile music (portability) created a need for music that would play against higher levels of background noise, thus giving rise to the Loudness War. This took dynamics and detail out of our music.
3. Therefore, the lower price point better performing systems are passing through crud compared to earlier systems with higher variability of performance, that had better sources at the front end.
4. Added to this, is the licensing problem related to modern AV. A full-spec'd system requires the payment of licenses for rights to a large number of outside providers of soft- and hardware (THX, Dolby, Audissey, etc.) This cuts into the overhead, increasing the need for manufacturers to reduce the component investment. For B&O, a case in point is BeoSound 4, which didn't get a DVD-player in order to cut down on costs (and to avoid cannibalizing BeoCenter 2). It would have been simple to have a DVD-license/CD-license player in the BS4.
Pick your vintage components with care and you're set for an experience that matches and often surpasses what's available today, unless you get very picky.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-20082026-47/how-can-30-year-old-receivers-sound-better-than-new-ones/
Great replies Peter Jeff and Soundproof.
This has made me think that maybe my first system (BM 1200 BG 1200 etc) was not as high end as I thought it was at the time of original purchase.
Soundproof has raised issues that I hadn't really given too much thought to before.... The way that adding capabilities soaks up budgets because of royalty and licence payments.
I don't think I've heard any arguments against marrying modern sources to vintage equipment ..... I'm even more convinced that vintage has a role in modern music .... and some of the points raised tend to reinforce the idea that B&O speaker development and amplification is the most important area for B&O to focus on.
I've never heard anything against modern sources with older gear, it makes sense as the limiting factor was and remains the source. Not only the tech, CD being superior to old LPs and such, but the more existential issue of not truly being able to accurately capture in two channels a three dimensional sound field.
It is ironic and very disappointing, however, that today despite having a wonderful medium like CD or other digital recording, so much music is so poorly recorded, and deliberately to boot! Dynamic range compression and over modulation to win some idiotic loudness war. I guess it's true that some people can't stand prosperity and success but insist on degrading things.
Live listened to The Beatles rereleases, and it is amazing how much care was put into the original recordings, even the mono ones, and how well it's stood the test of time. Ditto for the old Columbia Masterworks classical recordings ans RCA Shaded Dogs. Once again a matter of skill, care, and execution. Engineers back then using inferior tools but who understood their equipment and media and cared greatly about perfection, vs. people blessed with high bit digital mastering who produce crap deliberately who just don't care.
I'm fortunate enough to have both original tapes and first pressings in NM condition of numerous recordings from the early days of stereo, including various items from the Beatles catalogue (vinyl), and it's amazing to listen to these through a well set up record player with a good PU and tonearm, or my reel-to-reel player.
Remastered versions rarely match the content of those pristine sources.
BTW - on the topic of modern electronics. Even editors of HiFi-publications are getting furious over the scams going on. Audio companies put a lot more effort into their products previously, if they wanted to be considered high-end. Today, pricing is irrelevant to the effort and caters to the vanity customer.
Some incensed comments from the CES 2013 show:
http://www.soundstageglobal.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=291:gorgeous-hardware-costing-almost-100000-but-what-the-hell-is-inside&catid=93:feature-articles&Itemid=354
http://www.soundstageglobal.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=282:ces-madness-sonus-faber-and-neodio&catid=93:feature-articles&Itemid=354
And Art Dudley of Stereophile wrote a by now famous column a few issues ago, where he criticized the tendency of irrelevant pricing at a NY audio show:
http://www.stereophile.com/content/skin-deep
Great stuff to read. Thanks for sharing the links.
Art Dudley rocks !!!
good reading, both your posts and the links regarding CES madness,
me and some friends from school, all technicians, went to a similar fair in Gothenburg last autumn, and I can just say "madness"
aslo here it was a lot of systems between 20 and 40€, thousands that is and there was no way the prices correlated to the sound quality, in many cases at least.
and funny to read about the interconnects we especially reacted to the booths with power supply interconnects and the digital once.. digital is per definition zeros and ones (1) and (0) they either will get there way from one end of the wire to the other or they will not,
also have to mention what my friends were most impressed with during the whole day: BeoLab5! sitting at the lobby on our way out the BL5s filled the whole room with massive sound, funny since they usually roll there eyes when I mention beo
I was at the next to last Chicago summer CES show in the high end show at the Hilton. I have never seen such a collection of hugely overpriced sonic atrocities in my life. I went into the combo room of Thiel and Mark Levinson, there sat the top of the line Thiel speakers driven by at least 150-200 thousand US dollars worth of electronics, large enough room and very well treated with acoustic aids. Absolutely ear bleedingly horrific. My audiophile buddy and I sat there in the sweet spot and just kept looking at each other with astonished looks. I heard the Wilson WAMMs, not terrible but just average, for a speaker that retailed for over a hundred grand back then.
I was about to abandon all hope of anything sounding good when I wandered in to the Fried speaker room, complete with the old guy Bud Fried himself. Eccentric guy, he is dead now sadly, he had a penchant for transmission lines and series crossovers. He had his speakers all over the room, no acoustic treatments, driven by midfi Harman Kardon gear, a receiver and CD changer, all wired with 16 gauge zip cord and OEM HK interconnects. The sound was wonderful, smooth, detailed without being bright, great octave to octave balance and bass, and great imaging. All for sane prices. I told him your speakers sound good, he replied, no they don't, they sound great!!! And he was right. Stood around and chatted for over half an hour, and a more knowledgeable, kind, sincere, and no BS gentleman you would never find.
High End is a diseased business these days and has been for years and years. I remember the early Stereophile mags when Holt ran the place, and they read more like later issues of The $ensible Sound, no wildly superlatives ridden text, rationally priced gear with reasonable descriptions, back then The Absolute Sound was where you went for the lunatic fringe.
To this day the speakers that blew me away most have been, old school Tannoys, Dahlquist DQ10's, Duntech Black Knights, and the most impressive of all the Beolab 5's. Compared to a lot of what is out there the price of the Lab 5 is absolutely sane.
I'd agree that new doesn't mean better but the sources are maybe easier and suprisingly good (i.e iphone etc).
I had a TV fixed once by Tim Jarman, while waiting to make sure it was ok, he played a recording on a B&O reel to reel tape recorder of the beetles, it sounded better from tape than the CD! I guess it added some warmth or something extra that made the recording warmer and closer to the original than the remastered CD version - I think the amp was a BL5000 and S75 speakers - still the best system I've heard and gave me a taste for wanting some of the vintage B&O equipment.
It's not a given that newer equipment will be inferior to older, but there's definitely reasons to be wary of what one is offered. A lot is just repackaged OEM. For instance, the Oppo BD-players have made appearances inside the cabinets of a variety of so-called high-end brands, with Lexicon probably pulling the biggest smoke&mirrors game when they didn't change a thing as they wrapped their own skin around Oppo's (except drilling ventilation holes underneath and "rebranding" the remote.)
Interconnects and speaker-wire are a field of study that tells you we're very gullible, and it's definitely not where you want to do your major investment when building a good system. But it allows for tremendous profit both for the "manufacturer" and the retailers, which is their motivation for telling some very tall tales to customers.
There are some very good speakers out there, and it's a shame that B&O didn't push acoustic lens technology (ALT) more purposefully when it was launched with BL5. Now you have companies such as German Physiks, Bolzano Villetri, MBL and others getting into the alternative dispersion category, which B&O could have owned with a vengeance. And it's where speakers are headed, without exception, as listeners realize what they have been missing when listening to "monkey coffins." http://techtalk.parts-express.com/archive/index.php?t-224581.html
"Buyer beware" when it comes to high-end audio. There's a lot of nonsense being pushed by manufacturers, particularly as they try to make digital playback as obtuse and difficult as possible, in order to sell their bespoke solutions to contrived problems (such as jitter.)
Here's my latest investment. A totally refurbished Garrard 301 Hammertone original, in a Russ Collinson plinth, with a refurbished Fidelity Research 64FX II tonearm, which I am using with a variety of pick-ups. People on the forum will know I also have a Beogram 3000 that was completely refurbished by Classic Audio's genius Frede Kristensen. (He's also worked on a Beosystem 1200 for me).
I get immense pleasure from listening to these vintage treasures, and am also able to pipe digital sources through them, when I want, of course.
Beautiful turntable - what's the reel to reel next to it. Agree with most of what's said, I think though in my experience you can get better sound from using decent leads (Video in particular), however there comes a point when the quality/price escalates to such an extent that the increase in quality is negligible and many people will not be able to tell or the equupment does not reveal anything else. I would always try and use decent quality leads and interconnects but wouldn't spend a fortune. that's my opinion anyway, I know everyone has different opinions on this looking at all the threads on the topic
Best video interconnect buy for me was the locking SCART lead - stopped it falling out - brilliant idea.
ajames:many people will not be able to tell or the equupment does not reveal anything else
Very true - see James Randi for details.
Some of the Devialet thread could do with adding here!
On the question of room acoustics etc I have just had an interesting experience.
I've had a 1970's Beomaster 2000 (refurbed by Martin) playing into a pair of S45's (sim S45.2) mounted on the wall for some time.
We recently had a room rearrangement (i.e. moving things up the wall because of granddaughter!). The S45's were relocated to sit on top of a pair of Ikea shelf units (not longer made but similar to the Lack series...... boxy 50mm thick hollow shelves and uprights). Corrugated cardboard between the speakers and the units to prevent marking.
The difference in bass was astonishing. I no longer have to use the 'Loud' button when playing music at low volumes. It's as if the Ikea shelves have somehow become part of the speakers!
ajames: Beautiful turntable - what's the reel to reel next to it?
Beautiful turntable - what's the reel to reel next to it?
Hi - that's a Technics 1506, refurbished and playing/looking as new. Fun to have.
When it comes to cables, I'm quite agnostic, and definitely not in the market for the Nordost power cords that they are trying to sell for GBP 12,600.00 for the 2.5m version. They're a bargain when you go for the 1,25m ones, at GBP 8,750.00
Sorry, I can't type that without laughing. On the topic of cables, high-end audio is beyond ridiculous and far into sheer lunacy.
http://www.highendcable.co.uk/Nordost%20ODIN%20Power%20Cords.htm
This is what Nordost claims will happen to your playback when you use their POWER cords instead of "regular ones." Not bad when you consider that there are transformers and whatnot between the wall socket and the signal processing inside your audiophile component. Who would have thought putting a piece of special cable between the wall and your system would achieve miracles? Arriving quicker, no less!
Let Odin feed your system and get ready for improved noise floor and resolution, increased transparency, dynamic range and freedom from grain, more believable sound staging, more natural life and musical dynamics, a breathtaking range of tonal colours. Suddenly the music will step away from the system producing it, taking on a life of its own, becoming a real performance – all because the power on which your system depends is cleaner and arriving quicker.
soundproof: Let Odin feed your system and get ready for improved noise floor and resolution, increased transparency, dynamic range and freedom from grain, more believable sound staging, more natural life and musical dynamics, a breathtaking range of tonal colours. Suddenly the music will step away from the system producing it, taking on a life of its own, becoming a real performance – all because the power on which your system depends is cleaner and arriving quicker.
I've mentioned this before in other threads but - How can claims such as these be lawful? Surely it is illegal to make false claims for products that you sell!! I'd love to see one of these companies taken to court and forced to admit that all of their claims are false.
Also how are hifi mags allowed to publish similar drivel in so called reviews of such products - again, they are deliberately giving false information and advice to the vulnerable of our society (i.e. audiophools with money buring a hole in their pockets).
I have no sympathy for the people that buy such as this but I do feel strongly that companies should not be allowed to sell goods under false pretenses.
Ban boring signatures!
Puncher: soundproof: Let Odin feed your system and get ready for improved noise floor and resolution, increased transparency, dynamic range and freedom from grain, more believable sound staging, more natural life and musical dynamics, a breathtaking range of tonal colours. Suddenly the music will step away from the system producing it, taking on a life of its own, becoming a real performance – all because the power on which your system depends is cleaner and arriving quicker. I've mentioned this before in other threads but - How can claims such as these be lawful? Surely it is illegal to make false claims for products that you sell!! I'd love to see one of these companies taken to court and forced to admit that all of their claims are false. Also how are hifi mags allowed to publish similar drivel in so called reviews of such products - again, they are deliberately giving false information and advice to the vulnerable of our society (i.e. audiophools with money buring a hole in their pockets). I have no sympathy for the people that buy such as this but I do feel strongly that companies should not be allowed to sell goods under false pretenses.
And how about wiring after wallplug, inside of your walls? Hi-Fi grade allready? And don't forgot to change your (digital)USB-cables to audiograge ;)
blah-blah and photographs as needed
Dom
2x BeoSystem 3, BeoSystem 5000, BeoSystem 6500, 2x BeoMaster 7000, 2 pair of BeoLab Penta mk2, AV 7000, Beolab 4000, BeoSound 4000, Playmaker, BeoLab 2500, S-45, S-45.2, RL-140, CX-50, C-75, 3x CX-100, 3x MCL2 link rooms, 3x Beolab 2000, M3, P2, Earset, A8 earphones, A3, 2x 4001 relay, H3, H3 ANC, H6, 2014 Audi S5 with B&O sound, and ambio
I have to agree with everything I've read in this thread so far.
What some manufacturers charge for their products (especially snake oil cables) is just plain ludicrous. If they find wealthy gulls to buy their stuff, so be it.
Now serious manufacturers like B&O, or Revox have charged sustantial amounts for their equipment, but never pretended they were audiophile or anything, or hand made on virgins' thighs, but what they sold was just about quality built industrially.
Their vintage equipment was good and still is today. The difference is that the layman could never afford to buy it then, and often did not even know about its existence!
So yes it makes sense buying it today, and it can be every bit as satisfying (and a lot cheaper) than modern equipment.
And fixing it is so much fun! Buying new hifi components is boring and making wood-trimmed vintage amplifiers live again is so self-rewarding!
QED (I think)
About sources: I love CD, but I still have hundreds of LPs and EPs that I enjoy playing. The only problem is the end of side distortion on well-played ones. So I am happy to listen to that last track on CD or MP3!
An old tuner is also worth having. Live concerts are just amazing, and can be recorded on a well fettled open reel machine!
Power conditioners can make a difference in populated areas where a multitude of parasitic interferences such as machines with big motors, lifts, transports that use electricity have a deleterious effect on the quality of the supply. Then, being galvanically independent from the power grid can improve the stability of badly designed equipment.
Jacques
chartz:And fixing it is so much fun! Buying new hifi components is boring and making wood-trimmed vintage amplifiers live again is so self-rewarding!
I agree with Jacques here, for me the most fun is, to get these vintage items look and work like when they left the factory, when you then fire them up for the first time after a refurb, you get a lovely feeling inside, and a big smile to the outside. And these old amps, receivers and speakers, sound wise, beats nearly everything you can buy today.
Collecting Vintage B&O is not a hobby, its a lifestyle.