Still have the sony minidisc player, also have the sony walkman minidisc recorder (rehearsal recorder at the time). That was a great underrated technology!! Good quality, erasable, re writtable. Now if I have to put speakers somewhere, I'd buy a pair of cheap studio active monitor (eg M Audio BX8). I won't bother anymore with hifi equipment. A small mixer ==> active speakers.
Agree on the studio monitors, I had a cheapish pair of Alesis ones (spelling may be wrong) they were great but brought them to a party once and they got drenched in beer
Sold my min disc player a year ago still got a portable one but no discs, These are the German Magnat speakers I have...a bit on the large side and the Receiver is a beast and weighs in at 30kgs. Still got a VHS recorder and recordable DVD and some other bits that I would have to investigate if anyone has a use for any of them.
I used to work for phillips and I was once on a training course in eindhoven. We had a guest speaker in one day from design and he explained why cd's were 74 mins and why the hole is that size.... The boss of phillips' favourite symphony was 72 mins and he insisted it fitted onto one disk. As for the size, it was only picked as there was a meeting on what the hole size should be and the lead guy just grabbed some guilder coins (pre euro) out of his pocket and said "thats it". 1 guilder coin. 100% true.
My only speakers were a sound bar that I could plug my turntable into. Good, but to me it seemed like listening through a blanket. Wifes opinion is, if it makes a noise it works, but I knew I was missing out on the finer details I found a playlist on Spotify 'Speaker testing tracks' https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5...i=DQ-uFFtjRnut97-y7FIPWg&utm_source=copy-link This sounds really good on my car stereo, and realised the speakers in my car are better than in my home I have now invested in a Sony stereo amplifier STRDH 190 and some decent (for me) speakers ELAC ELAC-DEBUT-B6.2 Plus some headphones Beyerdynamic DT770pro 80ohm Total cost is about £650 but look forward to a good improvement in my listening experience
I still rock my circa 1988 NAD 7100 receiver in the garage. Still performs as good as the day I bought it. https://www.kenrockwell.com/audio/nad/7100.htm My Snell Acoustics KII Bookshelf speakers have since died however. Great staging on those in the day and I really loved them. Thank you Peter Snell.
Now there's a subject of great contention Does music equipment sound better as it gets older? If so, how does the equipment know when to stop and stay good? I guess the question is; is 'breaking in' a real thing? Or is it our ears perceiving a better sound when it is just our hearing adapting to the equipment? If equipment is sold new, and then needs 100 hours of white noise to make it sound better, why isn't this done at the factory so it is sold at its best?
Speakers break in is logic and real. But now does it sound better once break in? That depends about the reference we start from. The bigger the speaker is, more change in sound will occur after break in. On guitar speakers Andy referred to, we are on 12" speakers, exposed to high level (understand there wider membrane movements), and bass response is almost all given by the speaker itself. In hifi system, the bass response is helped a lot by the volume of the cabinet. All that being said, I'm not into old/new comparison. I have an empirical approach of.. everything, and found out that listening music into cheap studio monitors (composite bass membrane) is great. Tight bass, accurate trebles, etc.
Always wondered/sceptical about the speaker running in thing as the only mechanical moving part is the rubber/paper whatever that holds the cone in situ so all I can see is that it's going to require more power to shift it when new than when its old and perhaps more supple...never heard a difference yet.
Don't know with hifi, but on guitar amps it's obvious (speakers are bigger and full range) After hours of hard use, the bass response is much wider, and we need to roll down the bass pot a bit. The rubber/foam around the cone soften.
I've ended up with a few Sonos speakers dotted around the house, with Amazon Music and a few CD rips from the old days. Umpteen hearing tests prove how my >50 year old ears are pretty crap these days, and that's kind of the point. There are so many variables when it comes to generating, recording, transmitting, emitting and then hearing the sound. There can be improvements and degradation at any point, so often spending over a certain amount gives diminished returns. Sometimes though, it's nice to have a system that can blow a woman's clothes off though! (Eh, Napster?!!)
Amphion Argon 3LS speakers! https://amphion.fi/enjoy/products-home-audio/argon3ls-floorstanding-loudspeaker/
Currently pairing a (discontinued) MQA NAD Masters with SCM19s. Recently replaced the blutack coupling the closed box speakers to their stands and decoupled them using vibration dampening soft silicon feet (made for computer towers) which resulted in an increase in soundstage depth. I have an old Sonos Play1 speaker in the garage which gets a lot more use than the house system..
Received my new Beyerdynamic DT770Pro headphones yesterday and spent the evening listening to playlists on Spotify, with the high quality activated and the difference is amazing!! I played it loud and the music was so clear, I can finally understand what they mean by 'wide soundstage' and 'clear separation' Almost visualising the placement of the singers and instruments in 3D with the singer in the middle, guitar to the right, drum to the left - a backing singer up above somewhere I am listening to music I have played over and again for years and I am now hearing instruments I never knew were there, delicate plucks of a guitar or the gentle touch of a drum brush. Even female vocalists backing a male singer giving depth to a tune. I can say that as I relaxed into some of the more mellow tunes, for the first time I could see/image what colour the music would be
I was waiting on a pair of Elac B6.2 speakers from the USA, but having been delayed at customs for almost a month I opted to upgrade. I spoke to Mark at Richer Sounds in Oxford and jointly we agreed a pair of Kef Q350 would be good for my needs and room size Received them the next day with six years warranty from Richer Sounds and set them up, paired with my Sony STR-DH190 They sound phenomenal, streaming music from my phone using Spotify Premium (highest quality setting) over Bluetooth and the soundstage is so clear, each pluck of a string is clear.