Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

what was it with the Leak?

Nothing really. It was great. Mostly just prefer real vintage for the type of listening i do.
With that said. I would still like to try a cheap asian class d. Maybe the SMSL DA-9.

Not with the other Class D's I've had. My Rogue's power circuit was Class D and the SMSL AD18 that I have returned to is also Class D. It was just really piercing and quite shrill. I can't listen to horns for more than five mins because they make my ears hurt. So maybe I'm just a weirdo.

@psee - ha - glad to hear I'm not the only indecisive one. I saw someone on ASR write: 'Fosi Audio, Douk, Aiyima etc are all very good for the money, whereas SMSL, Loxie, Topping etc are just good period.' I would also like to try a DA-9, but to be honest, I will probably just save my cash for now. CXA61's have just had a huge price cut in the U.S. from the outrageous $1099 to $599, so I'll probably wait for those to come back into stock/wait for one to pop up on Cambridge Audio's refurb eBay site and snap that up. I ordered an AXR85 but cancelled my order due to yet more indecision.

No i've heard that from other people about certain class-d amps. Just a tad too digital and sharp. I only run vintage speakers so they may weigh each outer out. Dunno. Will try to find one cheap and report back.

Having my eyes peeled on a pair of JBL Centurys at a local old school auctioneer. Bought plenty of things there cheap and hoping these fly under the radar as well. In need of some tlc but still. Also a couple Luxmans listed..

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Not if it's well implemented.

Indeed, I was under the impression that that one was.

Maybe gain staging was wrong, often the cause of harshness in digital components.

That reciever is from 1975, in terms of capacitor life it's ancient!

If I were you what I would do is buy some contact cleaner (the wd40 is good and has PTFE in it), open it up and clean all the pots and switches inside where the connections are. It's as simple as spreading them and cycling them 10-20 times. Then hopefully that'll be it, otherwise be prepared to buy a multimeter to check that all your capacitors are working as they should, if they're not they'll need replacing, which shouldn't be hard on that receiver. Technics components from that era are laid out in very straight forward manner.

Also Hi-Fi Engine has a manual.

P.S. I've got a Technics turntable from 1979, it's great but needs some tweaking now and again. Recently I cleaned all the pots because it wasn't keeping time, and that resolved it. I also replaced the power cable because it was a bit corroded.

+1 to that. I have a similar era AKAI AA1030 and that needed all the pots and switches nuking with de-oxidiser. Volume is slowly starting to drop on the right channel from the phono inputs, so it'll be time for a re-cap soon.

We’ve had our HK430 Twin worked on a few times now, fingers crossed this one sticks. Had the typical issues, but that last guy who worked on it was happy to tell me in detail what he did to clean up the pots et cetera.
My eyes glaze over just thinking about that conversation…

Cheers all. Was hoping it'd be something simple, but feared it would involve some tinkering. Will try the other inputs alongside using the phono stage from the TT first, then if that doesn't do the trick, will start looking at taking it apart - if I don't feel confident enough, there's a couple of local hi-fi shops that might get the work instead.

To clean the pots it's just a case of removing the cover usually and spraying them. 15mins job really. More than happy to guide you through the process if you want to DM me.

If you haven't already, have a look in the forums because hifi repairs are fairly well documented, and if it's a common amp and common problem someone will have solved it already. Of all the hifi kit I've had problems with everyone has been fixed by cleaning, or a little bit of soldering.

The local place in Walthamstow is £80 just for them to look a component.

Re Walthamstow

Are you referring to the amp shop at Black horse road?

The local place in Walthamstow

Is that the place on Hoe St up near Central? I notice they have a "closing down" sign in their window now.

At some point, I'll want to get my Meridian bricks re-capped. I previously used an ex-Meridian engineer who had set up a servicing business but when I looked for him a few years ago, he seemed to have packed up.

Yeah, the one at Black Horse Road. Goes totally against my Northern sensibilities.

Managed to find a CA CXA61 for $599, which makes it even cheaper than its English price. Not fatiguing like the little T9 Pro was. Very pleased with it so far.

That’s kind of a departure…

CXA61's have just had a huge price cut in the U.S. from the outrageous $1099 to $599, so I'll probably wait for those to come back into stock/wait for one to pop up on Cambridge Audio's refurb eBay site and snap that up. I ordered an AXR85 but cancelled my order due to yet more indecision.

Said that a week ago. But thought they'd sold out everywhere. Smaller brick and mortar stores have terrible SEO though, so they never come up in search results. I managed to find one accidentally by looking at Vivid Audio stockists. Was curious as to how ridiculous expensive their speakers were and a stockist came up in the Bay Area. Turns out they also stocked CA and had two CXA61s left in stock at $599. Was a no brainer at that price. My first ever amp was a CA Topaz something, and my favorite ever amp was a CA Minx Xi. Natural progression.

Yeah, just comparing that to the Aiyima.

Yah. Just wanted to see if buying something cheap would satisfy my want for a 'better' amplifier. It didn't. Lol.

Aiyima could really do with picking box foot print and style, and sticking with it. it bugs me that it's all so random, and it's not even like they've made everything as small as possible to cut down on the export costs, because the tube phono pre amp I got came in a massive box with a RCA to 3.5mm cable.

New iteration. Schiit Freya Plus preamp > Linn Majik 4100 power amp which, because it has four 100W channels, can bi-amp the speakers. Liking it so far, although I’ve got some cabling I need to sort out properly.

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Sorry to spam but this may be of interest here. I’m selling my wife’s DJ stuff - Technics turntables, a mixer and monitors:

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/384756/

Have ordered some contact cleaner to try and fix my issue with the vintage receiver - will see how that goes.

If it doesn't work - it's probably not worth enough to bother getting professionally repaired, so I'll be looking for something new.

With that in mind - what's the best option for a new amplifier, budget around £300, which doesn't look like shit? I've got the Rega IO and Marantz PM6007 on my shortlist at the moment - open to suggestions!

What speakers do you have? Size of room? What are your general volume levels?