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Modern Audio gear has gone to the dumps

ray104	Date: December 15, 2007 @ 9:37 PM Is it me or has Modern Home audiop gear gone to the dumps in terms of quality.. I just got Interested in Vintage audio gear like Cassette decks CD players Receivers /ampa tuners turntables, reel to reel 8 track and whatnot. I just noticed how much better made this older stuff is inclusing speakers used to be that large bookshelf speakers with "8" or "10" woofers are common and today the woofers are only "4' and you need a sub just to be able to listen to real music! And components have gotten worse too a Huge receiver which is practically empty inside sells for at least $100-400.00 and weighs about 5 LBS and has the wattage ratings exaggerated.. I mean it says 200x2 watts and it clips on at high volume because its only really about 30 watts per channel. what a P.O.S and it bends and craks easy and takeds a lot of button presses on the volume to hear any sound even on 90 DB. efficent speakers! I got a 30 watt 1970's superscopre receiver which can sound louder than most modern receivers hooked up to the same speaker.
ChillinBuzz	Date: December 15, 2007 @ 11:00 PM most speaker ratings these days seem to be the peak music power output (PMPO?) which is wildly more than what the speakers can really handle. my stereo speakers are 200 watts per channel PMPO but considering the room is still intact, i don't think they can reach even half of that.
zedsalt	Date: December 16, 2007 @ 10:56 AM I think it's largely an issue of supply and demand. One might assume that listeners would want better and better equipment to make up for the lossiness of digital "recording", but I think designers/manufacturers instead look at how accepting the public has been of digital's lower sound quality and think, "Well, obviously, it's more important to them to be able to jog with a tiny music players strapped to their arms than it is to hear the music in all of its richness and complexity". Of course, there are always going to be folks like yourself who want the highest quality listening experience and are willing to pay for it, and the necessary equipment becomes "boutique" status merchandise.
ray104	Date: December 16, 2007 @ 2:36 PM I agree with all of you guys. I think I'll be sticking with the older gear. The only really good gear costs $$$$$
LiQuidMetamo...	Date: December 16, 2007 @ 3:29 PM Yes - and no. For example, some digital technologies such as CD players are vastly improved, even the home consumer end compared to 10 years ago. The advent of the home theater and surround sound has led to a race to see who can produce this gear for less and the bottom end of the home consumer market here is built off cheap components and assembled in China or Indonesia (even Japanese brands are rarely built in Japan these days). It has become acceptable in this era when people listen to their music on ipods at low bitrate and through tiny, tinny, headphones. Suddenly those cheaper home theatre amps and speakers sound a lot better !! However, like Zed said, if you truly are an audiophile, quality gear does exist in the market - you just have to be willing to pony up the extra dough for it.
Thaspian	Date: December 16, 2007 @ 11:50 PM Shitty audio equipment has existed since the beginning of time. There's tons of good stuff out there. Even new. My stereo used to consist of Thiel CS3.6 speakers and an adcom amp. Hopefully it will consist of a new rotel/nad amp. This is relatively new, the speakers aren't. But the successor to them, the 3.7, are fucking amazing. New doesn't mean bad. bad means bad.
gtr1960	Date: December 17, 2007 @ 3:43 AM You have to look at the price range of the older gear. At the time that stuff cost quite a bit for the good stuff. I do agree though that there is some real crap gear out there, not just in home audio but pro audio and sound reinforcement stuff. Then again, on the upper end gear the improvements that have been made are quite good. I have older JBL pro line PA gear and older crown amps. I did a gig with the newer SRX JBL stuff with the new speaker designs. I gotta say they did a lot better job than my older stuff did. I think it just depends on what your looking at and how much your willing to spend.
zedsalt	Date: December 17, 2007 @ 10:33 AM I hope that I didn't unintentionally imply that there is such a thing as equipment that can make music which has been digitally encoded somewhere along the line sound just as good as analog. There isn't. There have been plenty of good efforts at imitating the listening experience...running digitally-encoded music through a pair of analog tape heads does successfully mimic the sound of digitally-mastered music recorded to saturated tape with any actual tape, for instance...but nothing brings back the elements of the sound that digital encoding destroys.
zedsalt	Date: December 17, 2007 @ 10:35 AM I meant "without any actual tape", of course. Sorry about that.
GeneHilbert	Date: December 17, 2007 @ 12:00 PM I have to agree w/Thaspian bad is bad. Crap in and crap out also falls into play. I also have older and newer JBL gear and the new works as well if not better. I also have older Pioneer, Kenwood and a Montgomery Ward AM/FM receivers in my studio I use to record monitor and playback as well as a set of discontinued Haflers. Mackie, JBL, Event, Fender, Marshall, Crown, QSC, Peavey all still make great gear. Without breaking the bank.... Of course the size of the bank not withstanding.
ray104	Date: December 17, 2007 @ 5:28 PM Bose sucks
Distilled1	Date: December 17, 2007 @ 5:55 PM MCS (JC Penny!!!) 70s this thing blows evey speaker but below amp and tuner Time window speakers try finding those bad boys custom made in the 80s in Michigan,.. thin damn things that will take clothes off someone standing next to them. But this is old and the amps blow a lot if I add the 6 ohm infinity speakers.. with=ch ROCK! but i digress I love the old big amps and recivers this set I have is black metal with rack handles on the side nice analog meters and beats the crap out of my other stuff from the 80s

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