amplifier question

My Rotel 870BX premap eats the pants of the Phono premap in my 6010OSE and my Cambridge Audio DAC1 sounds better than the DAC in my Marnatz CD6000OSE LE.

The CD players DAC is slightly smoother and has a little more 'audiophile' hint about it but the detail is very lacking, the cambridge DAC is much more detailed and a lot more energetic but only a tad brighter.

Also the built quality of both the Rotel (from around 1988 at a rough guess) and the DAC1 (1995) are both built as well as any modern products.

I guess modern stuff is much cheaper though than it used to be.

 

Some audio technology has improved in bursts, or has become cheaper, or more robust. Tweeters improved in the 60s with Celestion/Kef/Coles. Then some of these traditional sources dried up, then there was improvements in the 80s.

Electrolytic caps became more rugged and stable, partly due to demands in switch mode PSUs etc.

Stereo audio has generally become poorer value in the 90s, as the competition and demand has dropped

 

right, after a good dem i bought a roksan rok l 2.5 pre, power supply is a ds 1.5 and power amp a s 1.5 6 years old for the price of £900 these retailed 5-9 years ago for £3250 and it killed my newer 2 year old intergrated completly dead.
1 owner from new and boxed. detail to die for fed with a audionet art v2 cdp and driving jm labs 906's . the sound has bags of detail drive smooth as silk and katie melua sounds like she is in my front room. i spoke to roksan before purchase so if it did need a service it would have no probs. they assured me it was too young for one. so all in all a nice pre/pwr cobination for the price of a caspian.

 

amplifier circuits apart from digital ones, have not changed significantly since the very late 60s/70s

what has changed is semiconductor technology.

 

Excellent result ronaldo. That setup will give you many years of happy listening. Nice one

 

If I am correct, these were designed by our good friend chea jondle? a fine amp

 

I've used old and new amps and there are good and bad in both camps. I recently had delivered an early Musical Fidelity amplifier : the Synthesis. I am still pleasantly surprised at how good this amp sounds and use it regularly with much more expensive ancilliaries. A lot of it boils down to good design and a belt and braces power supply section. Some expensive amps can sound horrid because the money hasn't been spent in these areas but more on luxurious facias and exotic valves and the like.

 

Since you mention Musical Fidelity, their A1000 integrated from 10 or so years ago is so much better than anything they've sold recently (NuVista, TriVista, A3.2, A308 etc) that it's hard to believe.

Michael.

 

Yes I heard that one -it was a big smoothie alright and plenty of wallop. Albarry PP1's are a good 50 watter if you could ever find one. Or if you like big lush valve sound a Billy Beard BB100 rated at 50 watts RMS and loads of EL 84's. I recently bought a JVC Super A for 50p at a boot sale - it sounds really sweet although not very high end these little amps have an endearing sound I prefer to NAD budget jobs- bargain ! But I suppose the sign of a good amp is its seldom seen on the market - people hold on to them.

 

chea jondle enlighten me. thought i new them all as well
is he a famous amp designer

 

you haven't heard of our friend John. Where have you been?

He practically WAS roksan at one time, and audiocom, he is REALLY famous in the hifi world for being a really skilled designer, downright genuis, . and all around good guy