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Old vs. New

I see a lot of threads on various audiophile forums that basically go like this: I sold my 5-6-10 year old speakers, amp etc. and bought new this or that and it kills the old stuff and sounds so much better.

I have listened to a lot of classic hi-end speakers, amps and preamps and also listen to a lot of FOTM stuff and to my ears a lot of the "old junk" sounds better, sometimes a lot better. Don't get me wrong a lot of the new gear on the market sounds very good.

So let me ask a question, why do so may people automatically assume that older gear sounds inferior to new stuff? Audio tech did not really changed that much in 10 y. We still have the same two ears now as we did 10 y ago? If something was good 10 years go why is it no good now?
128x128faust3d
bigkidz
3,381 posts
 

I don't know but I'd put my old Lafayette KT-550 tube power amp up against anything out there today and it would probably beat most of all the new power amps today. You can't find transformers like the ones it this amp anymore. Others are the Quick Silver MX/MS-190 tube amps, and a few of the AR amps maybe D-76A, etc., once you upgrade a few of the parts. I also recently hear a very highly regarded pair of boutique speakers they are made to be musical and I thought I was hearing a slightly improved version of ProAcs, ARs and ADS speakers. If you consider Miller Sound an expert on speakers then you would find Bill's speakers compete exceptionally with today's speakers once Bill performs a little magic on them. Just find an old pair of large Advents and have Bill work on them, then see what happens!

Anyway my long winded ramblings means that sure many older components are not as good as the new components today but there are some exceptions that are just as good as the newer components today or even better.
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faust3d's avatar
faust3d OP
10 posts
 
"An interesting proposal is to take the classic old designs and update them with newer (and demonstrably better) parts."

With tube amps, most of the time, this is exactly what is done these days. Old classic designs are made with new TOL parts, funny thing is that times the new TOL parts sound inferior to old TOL parts. There were however a few very well made new amps inspired by classic amps. Take VAC PA90 for example, it's great sounding amp based on a classic old amp.
jaybo
4,478 posts
 
nothing plays old music quite like old components.
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