Has anyone truly compared Vintage vs. Modern?


Hi all, 

I'm super curious with all the love for vintage gear, has anyone squared off say a vintage Mac, Luxman, Accuphase against their modern counterparts?  Heck i'm intrigued if anyone has tried a Pioneer SX-1250 or a Marantz 2285 vs a modern integrated, for example.  Just looking for real world feedback.  

Thanks, 

EW

128x128mtbiker29

Showing 1 response by larryi

It really depends on the component.  I can take entirely vintage parts that are 70 to 80 years old and make a speaker system that will, for my taste, blow away any modern system except those that are essentially good replicas of such parts (e.g., G.I.P. replicas of Western Electric).  I would even use old paper in oil caps from that era for that speaker.  If low power is acceptable, I would take a vintage 70 year old Western Electric 124 amp (350B output tube) over just about anything I have heard.  The same goes for some vintage linestages and preamps.  

Of course there are no "vintage" DACs and servers etc. (depending of course on what one counts as vintage), but there are not too many modern DACs I would take over a 20-year old Audio Note DAC 5 signature--these still sound very good.