Listening to something about Billy Eilish’s new record - it will be released on recycled green plastic, if I understood correctly; goodness knows what that will do to the quality - it occurred to me that our record player predates the CD player.
Do you still use one? I very rarely use ours, and almost all the music we listen to is streamed.
I don’t have a record deck right now, though I do still have my old vinyl. And I don’t listen to streamed music - for me, it sucks all the value from it. Where I do listen, it’s material I’ve ripped myself, sometimes re-eq’d, usually at a high bit rate.
Still have mine a Luxman PD 264 but not hooked up. I rip most of my music from cd’s using flac for day to day. Do stream and looking at hi res services but normal streaming in the car.
I can tell the difference between compressed radio music/plain Spotify and the “HiFi” stream that Tidal provides, but I’m “fortunate” in that I don’t have a great ear, so I’m content!
I also ripped all my CDs. We used to have the basic Sonos system, which was very much just about okay. I should probably listen to them again now I have a better DAC in the streamer.
I chucked my old cheapo Pioneer deck away before we moved last year, but kept all of the vinyl - still in the boxes it came to France in 2003! Now I’ve got space for a music room/area I bought a mid range AudioTechnica deck. Unfortunately its made some of the old vinyl (that probably wasn’t looked after that well TBH😉) sound not so good, but I’ve started replacing the favourites with new remastered versions, as well as having the joy of browsing record shop shelves again. Mind you, new vinyl aint cheap but it does sound so good🙂. Just arrived this morning, Machine Head remasterred by Dweezil Zappa, including 3 cds which will get ripped and put on my MP3 for the car.
I don’t do streaming.
Oh yes, have kept all my vinyl stuff from when I started in the 70’s to collect my favourite bands. However with a toddler on the prowl, I have had to put the deck out of reach of all of us for a bit.
Not any more unfortunately - I got rid of all my hifi stuff and (sadly) all my vinyl records when I moved to Turks & Caicos in 2003 - it just wasn’t practical to take any of it and I felt I couldn’t ask relatives to store it all for an indefinite length of time.
These days I don’t sit and listen to music all that often to be honest - though that may change when I retire!
I enjoy the silence when I am driving for example - I’ll put a CD on but usually turn it off after about ten minutes.
That said I do occasionally pick up a hifi magazine and lust after some of the high-end kit they feature, especially turntables which have that old-school vibe to them!
I have a couple of record players that I use daily, I have virtually no other physical music formats, other that the radio, in the house other than vinyl. For every day use I will utilise a Beogram 7000 as it offers me complete around the house, and garden, listening.
We are lucky enough to have a large enough house to enable a music/listening room in which I use a Gold Note Mediterraneo turntable (I sold two of my M/C’s to buy it) coupled with a PH- 1000 & TUBE-1012 Amp supplying a pair of Beolab 28’s.
I buy two or three records a month to add to my near 11,000 albums, which all go through a HUMMINGURU Cleaning Machine on virtually each play.
Thats some dedication 
Personally I find that even some of the more budget kit is better than a fair bit of the old kit. Without going into hifi porn prices. Indeed I run a little Chinese class D amp for day to day and tv sound. When the occasion demands it on goes the class AB NAD, much bigger fuller sound obviously but the little class D is not far behind. Still a joy to listen to and I really do like switching it on when I get home. Class D is drawing 22 watts, class AB 74 watts and upwards.
It’s a good thing NAD never made valve amplifiers otherwise you’d be sitting there listening to your glowNADs…
I had a NAD 3020 back in the day. Nice little amp if a bit plasticy. My last proper amp before I departed for Foreign Climes was an Audiolab 8000A.
Out in the Coconuts I had a surround sound system imported at a fair amount of expense (plus 33% import duty) from the US - a set of B&W 600 series speakers and an Onkyo surround sound receiver, with a Sony PS3 for BluRay playback, running into a Mitsubishi 1080p projector.
I would have loved to have brought the B&Ws back with me but the cost of shipping was prohibitive. I did bring the projector back though and still use it occasionally, almost 15 years on - it holds up well!
I’ve never been a hifi buff, possibly because there have always been other more important calls for my cash. At one time I had a good ear, although age and a bit of tinnitus may have taken away from that more recently. It’s quite tempting to have a go at building a valve hifi amp (really it’s 2 amps, one for each channel) carefully designed to be clean unlike my guitar amps.
I quite like simple stuff TBH.
I still have my old Manticore Mantra - but it’s in the loft and I have no plans to fetch it down.
Subjectively and objectively CD is way better, compressed formats are meh in terms of audio quality but you have to admit that they are more convenient. Besides there’s always FLAC if you want lossless compression.
I’d be more prepared to have a discussion as to whether class D amps are “good enough”, or if class A is worth the room heating qualities over class A/B (and, indeed, we can talk about class G & H today as well).
Now there is another great rabbit hole, the original mastering was nowhere near the rates that audiophiles play now, mostly just upscaled with the same errors possibly algorithmed to try and cover it.
The newer class D with swappable opamps are very good, even mainstream players are heading that way due in part to the power demands that other class amps require as I stated above.
If the original master tapes were analogue then that limits the quality, if they were digital then less so and if they were 24-bit other things in the signal chain are likely to be the limiting factors. 16-bit is plenty good enough for the end consumer format.
In fact 8-, 16- and even 24-bit are just about differing noise levels.
Great presentation by Monty Montgomery on YT
Sounds like a lot of fun as a project and love to hear how it turns out if you get to do it. I am thinking of getting two chinese class D monoblocks as they emailed me the other week having built these as a large customer request went in. They already have a two chanel switchable to one so you can twin up but its not a true bridgable amp, it just cuts off one chanel so the power supply has less to do.
It’s probably worth separating technical performance from listening pleasure, although undoubtedly for some they will be closely linked. For me as a musician, it’s all about the mids.
Which ones?
Fosi audio V3’s monoblocks, my V3 is a stereo amp but as stated they are making monoblocks as well.
If you’re interested, Merlin has some great information on amp design for a variety of uses including hifi:
I still have his original book on pre-amp design for guitar and bass that was very helpful when I started modding and making my own stuff.
FWIW (and that may not be much) my favourite clean tones are from class A and my favourite overdriven/dirty tones from class A/B. I did design (well, strictly speaking mod - there’s really very little in an amp based on a dual-triode preamp and single pentode power amp) a 5W SE amp to have quite a lot of negative feedback in the pre-amp that sounds quite pleasant when lightly overdriven. But so much of the tone is from the speakers too that, for guitar use and likely hifi too, it’s just as important to find the right speaker as it is to fiddle with topology.