studio equipment that makes it into home hifi


In recent years I have begun to take more notice of professional/studio hifi gear. Really ever since i got the Yamaha NS1000 my attention turned. Amongst other well known studio products that have managed to cross over into home audio is the Technics Sp-10 turntable rogers ls3/5a, revox equipment, etc. And hey a lot of these ended up being classics!

What's more they often seem to cost a lot less than home audio and sound very accurate and neutral. For example I picked up the Yamaha P3200 power amp for $150. Built like a tank, I was not expecting much from this warhorse. What the hell at 500w per channel they were only to be used to drive subwoofers. I put it into my smaller second home rig replacing the Jadis DA7 and driven by a valve preamp. Was I in for a surprise. It was subtle fast had good transparency and soundstaging and equal detail to the Jadis. Its bottom end as you would imagine was wonderfully taut deep and powerful. I was very pleasantly surprised. Only let down was a raggedness at the top end and it missed the last few ounces of tonal purity. BUT in no way did it sound cold sterile or hard, quite the opposite it was emotionally very engaging.

Has anyone any other studio products that can be used in home hifi systems even high end systems and look good???
audiojoy4
For someone into reel-to-reel tape, the Otari MX-5050 series will beat consumer decks sonically and every other way. Only problem is that many of these workhorse studio and radio station decks were beat to death. But if you can find a good one, you've got a real winner. And Otari still sells the latest version (MX 5050 BIII), which can be had with a quarter-track playback head as well as half-track record/playback. Dave
Absolutely. QSC amps have proven to be an excellent performer and unsurpassed value. I use them in a horizontally tri-amped active system. Only drawback is the fan noise, but since I'm using them for home audio, and not continuous high level output as with DJ or stage use, the fans have been disabled. Simple convection cooling (like most home audio amps) has yet to cause any overheating.
Apogee Digital's BigBen digital clock was a unit I was introduced to by a friend, at the time I had a Zanden Dac and it took that dac up several notches.

I have since sold the Zanden Dac and BigBen clock and now use an RME Fireface 400 for digital AD/DA conversion. It also doubles as a headphone amp as well in my system. If I want to do surround sound, it will also accommodate that as well. It is a 'digital Swiss Army Knife'.
mackie SA1521 powered speakers. heavy wood cabinets (not plastic, like the popular SRM450s). 2-way: 15" driver and a very un-horn-sounding horn. top-to-bottom, natural, powerful (these will go LOUD) sound. you can get them used for about $800 each. the downsides would be that they aren't pretty furniture and they're not good for near-field listening, having been designed for live events. if you don't need phono, you could get an older Mackie mixer for a pre-amp ($150 used) - absolutely clean and neutral sound, and, of course, a perfect match for the speakers.