Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms vintage versus modern hifi

As a new member, I thought I would try and start up a hifi discussion, as I have spent the last 50+ years in or around the hifi business and I have plenty to say!
I started in the 60s upgrading Quad 2 amps and then made a bit of a name for myself with my modified Thorens TD124s and 125s. I also modded and set up Garrards and Transcriptors.
I have had more kit pass through my hands than I could possibly remember and would love a chat with anyone who is interested.
I am still active in the world of vintage hifi hifi and have a good reference system which I play pretty much every day or evening.
There is not one semiconductor in my system (even the power supplies are all valve) and I would put it up against anything I hear at the high end shows nowadays.

Hi Barry. I have aTechnics deck wharfdale super 6os dual amp marants tape recorder and sony radio integrated gathering dust in the attic are they worth anything, very happy memories but seem such a waste.


Em

Barry, this is a very nice new thread you have started! I had prepared the second version of my text during the last hour and just wanted to start a new thread regarding tube hifi, inspired by your welcome introduction.Here it is as I would have posted it when it was a new thread:)


Our newcomer Barry inspired me to start this thread, because he said that tubes are one of his beautiful hobbies. I wanted to make a start to discuss audio tubes. Initially I am not interested in brands or special circuits or differences in the quality of tube manufacturers. It's meant in principle. The other topic can come later if you like.

I have written a text about the whole history of my tube amps, speakers and so on since I was 15 years old. It didn't stop...At the end I had written half a novel and thought...who wants to read all this. That's why I erased everything.

So here is a second attempt and everything else can be posted later, bit by bit. When it comes to the peculiarity of tubes, I would like to start with a childhood memory. We had a mono table radio in the kitchen. I literally crawled into that radio. I listened to music and school radio, preferably radio plays about all kinds of things, polar expeditions, world conquest by sailing ships etc. I was between 5 and 8 years old. Then this radio was replaced by a more modern one. I cried tears when it was taken away. The new more modern radio, we are talking about 1967, was a transistor radio, my old favourite radio was a tube radio. The transistor device was more modern, flatter and...tinny dead in sound in my ears, but I couldn't have said it that way yet. I didn't know all this then, but I felt it! Fortunately my grandmother got the old tube radio so that I could continue listening to it in her apartment. My father - very fortunately - bought a stereo in 1972. It was all great and new. A Sansui QR 6500 receiver with Sansui SP 2500 speakers with tweeter horns and lens. Even pseudo quadrophony with rear speakers, a TG 1000 Braun tape recorder and a Dual 1219 turntable. On the one hand it was all very impressive and new and modern and expensive. But honestly: It was not the sound of the old kitchen radio with its tubes and without! Crossovers. With its half-open cabinet to the rear and its cardboard speaker. (All things that would later play a role again).

I would like to say that the most important and most valuable thing about my father's stereo system was that I was introduced to jazz and classical music very early on through his records, although of course I loved listening to rock and rock jazz. From Deep Purple to Pink Floyd to Billy Cobham.

So much for the intro, why I became a tube enthusiast. Everything else later in posts, but this was important to me to tell. I realized technically much later what I liked so emotionally about this old radio in my childhood. It was the intimacy and the undisturbed warmth of the sound that had such a wonderful clarity at the same time. And you know how childhood experiences can be branded I do not wish to present objective proof
that tubes are better. Perhaps it is only my imprinting that became my leitmotif.

Ok, here is my first attempt which is focussing on gear.

In my case it is so that I have a few vintage amps and preamps. Over the last 30 years they have all been used for a longer period of time. I never switched gesr for reasons of new fashion. Four Quad II, two Leak Stereo 20 and in the meantime a 1994 Audion 300B. Preamps were the old quad tubes and a very simple Croft, which I like very much. It has no voltage amplification, only a cathode follower. It works great with the Leak Stereo 20 because they actually have the last stage of a preamplifier as the first gain input. I collected these treasures and never sold them.
But since the last 18 years a system has been established which I listen to everyday. With all pros and cons I am very satisfied with it. A CE22 commemorative edition from 1996 and a MC 275 MK4 from 2003 or 2004. I like the sound even if they have transistor gear in the power supply unit.

With loudspeakers I have never been the exchanger to want any nuances of marketing. I was interested in the principles of sound conversion. When I was 15 years old, I built the first horn systems together with a friend who was three years older and had a very good command of mathematics. Full horn, also in the bass. When I was 19 years old, I built a Klipsch corner horn. Unfortunately only from chipboard but it sounded quite good.

Later I replaced the midrange and tweeter horns with a 10 inch Tannoy HPD, together with the Klipsch Eckhorn I built myself. I would love to hear this system again today...but it has been scattered to the winds for decades.

I never traded my devices quickly but always listened to them for a few or many years. My best transistor sound when I was young was a used Quad System 405 with 33 preamps. They fed HPD 10 inch Alnico Tannoys in my dorm room. There was no room for horns. In the 90s I bought two pairs of used ESL57 in London.
I had the ESL in a frame two above each other. That was very cool. It was followed for many years by BBC monitors, then a Tannoy Canterbury. From 2008 to 2018 I had Klipsch Jubilee in my living room, the only one in Germany. It wasn't my wife who wanted more light in the living room. It was actually me. But in addition, after 10 years of full horn two-way system, the desire for a more intimate sound reappeared. Even though the Jubilees were already very good with TAD 4002 drivers. Just...there was a DSP involved and that bothered me more and more. In the end I had them passive, but that didn't work so well with the TAD (or I had to build a new Xover from scratch) and the other drivers for passive were not so good. But this speakers are still in my office.

So since then I have a BBC loudspeaker again, a Stirling Broadcast LS 3/6. These speakers are very close to the old kitchen radio. Turntable is an Oracle Delphy with SME V, very nice.

I listen mostly through this little bluetooth speaker. The music sounds great.

I was weaned onto Hi-Fi by my parents. In Malay as a child he had a system shipped over from the UK. Ferrograph reel-to-reel, Thorens/SME/Ortofon, Quad 33/303 and if my memory serves a pair of Cambridge Audio tall monitors.

I started as a PC engineer but always had a love of Hi-Fi and music in general. When i mortgaged myself up to the hilt for my first house I tool a saturday job in Auditions in Walton-o-Thames. That was good fun. Selling the high-end English and other stuff was great. I will admit to never really getting the sound from the Tube amps we had (some Musical Fidelity and others) and always ended up with chip based stuff. Probably a reflection on my music tastes.

I ended up with a big English system bought at staff discount and in some cases from people in the industry. I am now a product of the digital age and the LP12/Ekos/Troika has gone to a more appreciative home. There is a story about a cat the Troika and an insurance claim that is worth sharing one day.

The CD went French with Micromega. I should have known better as they sound wonderful but were just plain troublesome, I wonder where I am going with that comment? MicroDAC and MicroDrive then T-Dac and T-Drive which I still have.

The amps and speakers came as a package. We sold a lot of Exposure Amps which looked like an RS home build cabinet but were very good if you did not like the refined nature of NAIM etc. A friend offered me a package of the new pre-amp, 2 power supplies and 3 pairs of dual mono amps with the crossover to match the Linn Isobarik 2 speakers attached. Just as well we had a concrete floor and detached house. Listening to dance, disco and drum & bass (not the extreme stuff) makes the windows join in.

It's all linked up to the Sky box and other stuff for streaming now. Without a serious streamer it sounds about as good as it's source so a little variable but still pretty active. Lots of other Bluetooth speakers and headphones of various types floating around and some great stories of my time in Auditions if we get the chance for a socially distanced Hi-Fi sub-chapter meet at some point in the future.

I must admit to liking the system PeterJ has and a long term love of Quad ESL

I never quite made the leap into deeply specialist kit around the home - and now the I live in a flat by the sea it would be antisocial to neighbours above and below to invest in a system that I'd be too tempted to turn up to 11.

So most sound comes out of a Naim Muso streamer, which work just fine, producing rounded sound at low volumes, for music & tv. A Rega P3 turntable gets sounds out of vinyl that you never knew were there. CDs are played through a Tivoli Model CD and Harmon Kardon Soundsticks. A Bose Soundlink II gives an amazing sound for a portable speaker. My music is mostly streamed from Tidal, or Roon for stuff I own.

In the past 5 years I've invested far more in my hearing than in audio kit. It's to counter advancing loss, particularly in my right ear - a legacy I think of a decent-sized garden and 2-stroke strimmers, & largely unsilenced lawn mowers. My current Opn-S minirite R are pretty much invisible and pass unnoticed. The tech feature is that they're open, allowing sound to be heard naturally, with the hearing aids sound layered on top, to rebalance and ampilify sound, particularly in environments when there's background noise.

A phone app gives me a fair degree of fine tuning to suit the space I'm in. And paired with an iPhone I can discreetly stream phone calls and audio, which is a neat trick. (The rest of the iPhone is a horrific experience, and I'm looking forward to getting back to pure Android when they eventually sort out their low energy bluetooth streaming).

Will

I can imagine that your parents' system had a very good sound, Alistair. Ferrograph I did not know, an impressive tape recorder. According to this description only 15 of them came to Germany.

https://audioclassica.de/de/node/330.html

So you are very experienced with a lot of high end audio gear.
Yes, the sources have changed. If I don't listen to records, then mostly in everyday life the small Blusound node 2i with Tidal mqa stream, if the music is available, otherwise normal Tidal "hifi". I also appreciate the many worldwide Internet radio stations.

Barry,

I am with you on the Quad II valve amps. Mine were made in about 1957 and are still going strong, I love the "warm" sound they give and their relatively low output is more than enough into a sympathetic speaker.

Sadly they will not drive a newly acquired pair of Quad ESL63 Electrostatics which I run off a pair of 405's.

Peter Walker was a superb and innovative HiFi engineer and his products were built to last and still fetching strong prices after 40 or 50 years

I live near Huntingdon and knew a few of the Quad staff when they were still manufacturing, pleased to say that their service department is still going strong.

Barry,

I've just finished a major HiFi upgrade, in a way that is almost "back to the future" in that I have a mix of old and new technology in essentially new kit.

Starting with the sources...
Linn LP12 that has evolved into a deck that matches the mid range Linn package, but with an Ortofon MC15 2 cartridge.
Tube Technology Fusion CD player, a FGA programmed DAC feeding a class A valve amplifier stage to take it up to line level output
Linn Selekt DSM that is both digital pre-amplifier, web streamer and M/C amplifier.
The Sky/TV/Apple TV boxes are all connected together digitally and I have an optical link from them to the Linn box.

Amplification is provided by a new pair of QUAD II - 80 valve amplifiers.

Loudspeakers are a new pair of QUAD 2912 Electrostatic

I also have a Project Headbox amplifier: the next upgrade will be to replace that with a valve unit.


Overall it is balanced, yet dynamic and revealing system. One interesting quirk is that I can listen to CDs using either the internal DAC in the CD player, or feed the signal from the dec digitally to the DAC in the Linn. Some types of music sound better using the 20 year old FDA DAC, others better with the modern Linn DAC.

I'm going to start trying different types of interconnects between the Linn and Quad amplifiers. At the moment they are Nordost Blue Heaven cables, about 20 years old.