Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

derp! Cheers :)

Joe at mojo is pretty good.

After hearing a somewhat worrying bang I went into my living room to discover that one of my rear speakers was on the floor and the stand had snapped (not sure why after about 5 years).

Any suggestions for neat rear stands. Speakers are Wharfedale 9.0 with a couple of mounting holes in the back so not too big but a bit bigger than a lot of the little rear speakers (236 x 145 x 165 mm & 2.1kg {I think, there's a slim chance they're 4kg each} ). Cheers

So I finally got my hands on the PL-560, I got for free. It's quite filthy and missing both phono plugs, feet and head shell as expected. There's 50 cms of the old phono leads left, so I'll start with a pair of new plugs. Feet will be some sort of squash/tennis ball solution and since the Ortofon cartridge doesn't fit the original headshell, I'll use the other Pioneer one I picked up at the same time.
And then there's the thing about prying my dads vinyl collection from the hands of his greedy cunt of a widow. Apparently she saved them, as he was just going to throw them out. Yeah, throw out the original pressings he bought in the 70's and knew the exact value of, sure...

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i used to have one of these! cracking turntable, i have an abundance of cartridges and needles if you need any
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I've got an old Marantz CD80 (like below) that weighs 15 kilos. The side panels are made out of fucking cast iron and the rest of it is all aluminium and copper.

It still worked fine when I last used it six years ago but it has lived in the attic at my mums since, because moving it is just hard work.

I'd like to set it up in the new place if we eventually move-in but would like to re-cap it. Any idea how much that will cost? It's full of ELNA Cerafines which are pushing 25 years old and are almost certainly dry. I don't want any snake oil blackgates or fancy shit put in there, just stuff that works.

Or... Should I just replace it with something modern if that's cheaper?

The rest of the system consists of a NAD C355BEE and B&W 602 s3's. The source has been an iPad or phone for the last few years.

Epic CDP. It will cost a lot to have it professionally re-capped, but IMO there's no better starting point for a high end CDP... after the mid eighties all the real CD R&D went into making them cheaper, not better. Oversampling, upsampling etc may be paper innovations but have not convinced my ears. The TDA1541a dac chip is my faviourite ever (and lots of others agree) and you have the S1-Crown version (basically the elite sorted from the chips with the closest to ideal tolerances under test).

CD-80s can fetch quite decent money (150-200) but unless you are a tinkerer you will struggle to get better sound for the money (what I mean is you could buy a £30 Philips and make it sound very nearly as good with a bit of canny soldering). Also no modern affordable CDPs are built like this.

If it were me, I'd keep it. If I was a tinkerer (I am), I'd recap it myself and probably do a non-oversampling mod, maybe a tube output stage too. I've done both of these before on TDA1541 base players and they sounded superb.

I think my cheapo phono preamp has gone to the great electronic graveyard.
I have a cambridge amp, basic something or other.
I am thinking I would like to upgrade this year.
I was looking at the Yamahahahahaahah network amp (the R500?) as that seems to do everything (has a phono input, comes in at a decent price (250-300), can connect to the network so could play stuff that way) but I secretly love things like that Pioneer SA7500 (the knobs, man those knobs).
I can see that both ways have their advantages (new amp, will work out of box, still looks sexy vs old amp: looks very sexy has very lovely sound )

Any advice?

Would you be up for doing all that? Obviously I'd pay for your time and materials.

this guy: select45 restores/upgrades the old stuff. pricey, but will potentially last another 40 years.

as prev, the offer still stands if you want to come to tressillian towers and check out the big pioneer...

Wish I could but I'm just too slow at electronics and nowehere near competent enough to guarantee I wouldn't bugger your lovely machine... u need a profushnul.

I could re-cap it myself but wouldn't want to attempt putting in a new master clock or opamps. I'll definitely investigate further though.

Also, its impossible finding spares such as the laser and swing arm for the transport (CDM-1) these days.

Thanks for the offer, but I'm in Copenhagen and just bought a new Ortofon 2M Red for it. Should be a good combination.

I don't really see the point in adding a tube output stage to be honest. Wouldn't that just introduce loads of distortion? I may be wrong...

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the site is pretty good for reviews of the older models. it is all his opinion, though, and he is known for being a bit of a tool.

check this one out

@Chalfie

buying one 'raw' is a bi of a lottery, but you could always give it a refurb later...

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Tubes = lightsabers?

Kinda! Op-amps are definitely sith devices...

Tubes only distort when overdriven (for which we are truly thankful, or else Berry, Page, Hendrix, Young et all would have all sounded like Hank Marvin).

If you design the amplifier with gain well within the tube's linear operating range, you can get extremely low distortion and a very clean signal path. And to another level go will you.

ha! gotcha.

Investigate this I must.

I'd have it measured with a test CD. I'm doubtfult that it probably needs re-capping on the grounds that these things probably don't run hot, and newer electrolytics are more reliable; especially Elnas.

True. Caps should have a 30 year lifespan too. It didn't have any problems last time I fired it up either.