I miss the buying experience in the 70's. Was in the Navy at the time and lived in Souther California. Every Sunday in the LA Times Sunday paper there was a section called the Calendar section and it had all the ads from Pacific Stereo, University Stereo and the likes. There were real stores where you could go and listen to real gear! I got some pretty good gear on stuff they wanted cleared once they knew I was a struggling sailor! LOL. I also had a NAD 3020 guy talked me into it and I was glad he did. SQ vertical climb and so few watts. Looked like the future back then. There was a wall of reel-to-reels at Pacific Stereo. I had a philips. I stuck with NAD all these years up to this time. Sure miss hanging at the stores.
Did the Old Receivers Sound Good?
Before the high end started, we had all these receivers and integrated amps from Pioneer, Kenwood, Sansui, Sherwood, etc., all with incredible specs. Then somehow we decided that specs didn't matter and we started moving to the more esoteric stuff from Ampzilla, Krell and whoever, but the specs were not as good. My question is - Did the old Japanese stuff with the great specs sound better? I don't remember. I'm asking because many seem to be moving back to the "specs are everything" mindset and I was thinking about all that old stuff with so many zeros to the right of the decimal point.