Hope someone might be able to proffer an opinion. I have an old reciever in my possesion. Last time I got it out it worked ok. I'm pretty sure its a Rotel RX-202 from the mid to late 70s. http://www.radiomuse...ver_rx_202.html

I don't know what to do with it. I don't have it out at the moent as I have nowhere to put it but look the way it looks and one day hope to have it out. Just not sure what to use it for. Is it worth keeping?

No doubt a £100 receiver or amp from Richer Sounds would be many times better but it has character.

Find or borrow a decent turntable and speakers and give a trial. Some Rotel amps were pretty good but I don't remember all the model no's.

Still have my Sugden A48 amp. and other more modern stuff. Now and again the Sugden comes out of it's box and I'll remind myself how involving music can be. Digital music is more clearer and detailed with less noise I have to admit but analogue presentation seems to be less tiring to listen to.

I remember the amp very well as Purkiss HiFi were Sugden dealers and used to demonstrate it against the likes of Nytech,A&R60 and Meridian.

Digital music is more accessable consequently gets played at a greater frequency (guilty) but on the odd occasion I get some time to myself there is nothing better for me than what spins from a turntable.

Hope someone might be able to proffer an opinion. I have an old reciever in my possesion. Last time I got it out it worked ok. I'm pretty sure its a Rotel RX-202 from the mid to late 70s. http://www.radiomuse...ver_rx_202.html

I don't know what to do with it. I don't have it out at the moent as I have nowhere to put it but look the way it looks and one day hope to have it out. Just not sure what to use it for. Is it worth keeping?

No doubt a £100 receiver or amp from Richer Sounds would be many times better but it has character.

Be interesting to see how its survived the passing of time! As Soot1e has said, get it connected and reap the reward!

Suprising just how much of the 'old school' kit is out there just waiting to be fired up!

Will we ever see the old day's of 'demo-ing' equipment again? Be good if we could!

It did come with similar vintage wharfdale speakers but one was broke and I had to get rid of them.

It was loud for a time at least.

Found an old pic of times when life's responsibilities were that of a tidy bedroom and elbows off the table ... ;0)

My friend has an original Sugden A21 still in regular use, he sent it back to Sugden in 2000 or so for a rebuild, all good for a decade or so of smooooooooth music.

Nice little service that! Think the Rega get's it right without any fuss!

The Linn is a pain in the proverbial to keep in tune with its springs/grommets and other floating bits!

Looking forward to the HiFi Show in Bristol! Always go even though it's nothing like it used to be.

http://www.bristolshow.co.uk/

Linn not making a presence which is a shame but there are plenty of the good old british names making an appearance!

Yeah, the service was worth it. So idecided to torture the family last night and got out the old HiFi New Test LP! A good hour of faffing later and all was back to where it should be! As SWMBO said, it's not that CD's are "better", its like you said, they are "easier" because unless a record deck is properly set up, you just wont release the potential thats there. And lets face it most folk want things to work "out of the box" these days, not have to faff with them for hours!

Enjoy the HiFi show! Our one packed in years ago. If while you are there you find a set of floor standing speakers that are "wall" happy let me know! We are in the process of decorating/moving the house round and it looks like I'll have to give up the present open positioning of my Quad 22L's in favour of gaining floor/furnature space! I'm very happy with the Quads, but they do need air and thats going to be an issue for SWMBO's plans. She's happy for me to replace them for the same sort of budget thought, so thats got to be a positive in these times! Trouble is they also need to be suitable for my old Cyrus IIIi & Power Bi-amp combo!

Suggestions welcome!

Found an old pic of times when life's responsibilities were that of a tidy bedroom and elbows off the table ... ;0)

Mate, i'd have been soooooo envious of that room!!!!! Bet it was a real "pad"! ;0)

Yeah, the service was worth it. So idecided to torture the family last night and got out the old HiFi New Test LP! A good hour of faffing later and all was back to where it should be! As SWMBO said, it's not that CD's are "better", its like you said, they are "easier" because unless a record deck is properly set up, you just wont release the potential thats there. And lets face it most folk want things to work "out of the box" these days, not have to faff with them for hours!

Enjoy the HiFi show! Our one packed in years ago. If while you are there you find a set of floor standing speakers that are "wall" happy let me know! We are in the process of decorating/moving the house round and it looks like I'll have to give up the present open positioning of my Quad 22L's in favour of gaining floor/furnature space! I'm very happy with the Quads, but they do need air and thats going to be an issue for SWMBO's plans. She's happy for me to replace them for the same sort of budget thought, so thats got to be a positive in these times! Trouble is they also need to be suitable for my old Cyrus IIIi & Power Bi-amp combo!

Suggestions welcome!

That's not a bad budget... do you definitely want floor standers? Auditioned some KEF Q300 and R300's over Christmas. The Q300 were very good and in a simlar price range with stands, albeit not quite good enough for me to justify the cost of replacing my Monitor Audios...

Ah well, dont forget I'll have to factor in some funds for selling the 22L's on, (and I did get them well below retail!), so it's not like starting from scratch!

I'd prefer floor standers, simply because they can be more connected & can offer a better range, but i'm not averse to stand mounts. The main issue will be keeping the level of detail & ballanced base, whilst paring it with what can be a rather brash system & of course the need to be wall friendly. There are a few HiFi dealers in Sheff, so I'll be planning on a bit of auditioning once i've whittled down the list!

Ah well, dont forget I'll have to factor in some funds for selling the 22L's on, (and I did get them well below retail!), so it's not like starting from scratch!

I'd prefer floor standers, simply because they can be more connected & can offer a better range, but i'm not averse to stand mounts. The main issue will be keeping the level of detail & ballanced base, whilst paring it with what can be a rather brash system & of course the need to be wall friendly. There are a few HiFi dealers in Sheff, so I'll be planning on a bit of auditioning once i've whittled down the list!

I can understand that and if your system is quite brash then the Kef's could be a bit bright as at first listen with the dealers music I thought they were a bit 'quacky'. Once I changed the album they mellowed nicely though. Certainly some reviews have found them too bright but personally I was surprised at the base weight they were able to produce for a small box... even more so with the R300's as they are physically smaller (both were close to a back wall).

I guess your choice will also depend on the type of music you generally listen to as well - I was auditioning for my father-in-law who is a classical man and therefore into the clarity of his his strings and went for the Q300's. Interestingly whilst I was with him I fixed his mid-70's Teac A-150 tape deck so he's been using that recently and is very happy with the sound...

Yeah, the service was worth it. So idecided to torture the family last night and got out the old HiFi New Test LP! A good hour of faffing later and all was back to where it should be! As SWMBO said, it's not that CD's are "better", its like you said, they are "easier" because unless a record deck is properly set up, you just wont release the potential thats there. And lets face it most folk want things to work "out of the box" these days, not have to faff with them for hours!

Enjoy the HiFi show! Our one packed in years ago. If while you are there you find a set of floor standing speakers that are "wall" happy let me know! We are in the process of decorating/moving the house round and it looks like I'll have to give up the present open positioning of my Quad 22L's in favour of gaining floor/furnature space! I'm very happy with the Quads, but they do need air and thats going to be an issue for SWMBO's plans. She's happy for me to replace them for the same sort of budget thought, so thats got to be a positive in these times! Trouble is they also need to be suitable for my old Cyrus IIIi & Power Bi-amp combo!

Suggestions welcome!

Excuse me!! I have Cyrus 3 amp and CD player and I consider them my latest Hi Fi. 10 old years is new to me

Yeah, the service was worth it. So idecided to torture the family last night and got out the old HiFi New Test LP! A good hour of faffing later and all was back to where it should be! As SWMBO said, it's not that CD's are "better", its like you said, they are "easier" because unless a record deck is properly set up, you just wont release the potential thats there. And lets face it most folk want things to work "out of the box" these days, not have to faff with them for hours!

Enjoy the HiFi show! Our one packed in years ago. If while you are there you find a set of floor standing speakers that are "wall" happy let me know! We are in the process of decorating/moving the house round and it looks like I'll have to give up the present open positioning of my Quad 22L's in favour of gaining floor/furnature space! I'm very happy with the Quads, but they do need air and thats going to be an issue for SWMBO's plans. She's happy for me to replace them for the same sort of budget thought, so thats got to be a positive in these times! Trouble is they also need to be suitable for my old Cyrus IIIi & Power Bi-amp combo!

Suggestions welcome!

Your absolutely right! But then that was the whole HiFi experience wasn't it? Going through the ritual of setting it up and making minor tweeks in an attempt to find a little more magic from the system.

Forgot about the Northern HiFi show but do remember it was in a village like location?

Wall happy speaker's...phew ..a difficuilt one as most are silly money. Totem always spring to mind espcially with a Rega front end.Will keep a look out! S/H Pair of Naim SBL'S?

Mate, i'd have been soooooo envious of that room!!!!! Bet it was a real "pad"! ;0)

Yep, really lucky to have had understanding parents(pic taken 27 years ago) and live in a house with walls thick enough to be able to get the Isobariks a little warm.

Excuse me!! I have Cyrus 3 amp and CD player and I consider them my latest Hi Fi. 10 old years is new to me

Puts on Monty Python Yorkshire accent

10 year old? "Now't but a youngster"!

I bought mine in '97 and it wasn't new then, been used as a shop demo for a while, but it works for me too

I can understand that and if your system is quite brash then the Kef's could be a bit bright as at first listen with the dealers music I thought they were a bit 'quacky'. Once I changed the album they mellowed nicely though. Certainly some reviews have found them too bright but personally I was surprised at the base weight they were able to produce for a small box... even more so with the R300's as they are physically smaller (both were close to a back wall).

I guess your choice will also depend on the type of music you generally listen to as well - I was auditioning for my father-in-law who is a classical man and therefore into the clarity of his his strings and went for the Q300's. Interestingly whilst I was with him I fixed his mid-70's Teac A-150 tape deck so he's been using that recently and is very happy with the sound...

Yeah, I would class my tastes as "eclectic" to say the least! So what ever I listen to has to cope well with a wide range of styles. I'm hoping that when we move round the, the 22's will not be as bad as I envisage, but I can't imagine them sounding right without plenty of space! I think I may be keeping my eye on eBay on a couple of our local dealers second had stocks for a while!

Your absolutely right! But then that was the whole HiFi experience wasn't it? Going through the ritual of setting it up and making minor tweeks in an attempt to find a little more magic from the system.

Forgot about the Northern HiFi show but do remember it was in a village like location?

Wall happy speaker's...phew ..a difficuilt one as most are silly money. Totem always spring to mind espcially with a Rega front end.Will keep a look out! S/H Pair of Naim SBL'S?

Yep, really lucky to have had understanding parents(pic taken 27 years ago) and live in a house with walls thick enough to be able to get the Isobariks a little warm.

Oh I love a bit of the old "Ritual Tweeking" ! When SWMBO came in whilst I was using the test record, she enquired "whats that $h1te you are making us listen to now?"

Brother-in-law used to live in a place where he regularly "tripped out" his Electrostatics! I can still remember feeling my chest percussing, just like a live concert!

I think i'd be in the garage with the rest of my stuff If I suggested SBL's! Monsters!

I've been a professional Sound Engineer for nearly 30 years and the guys I work with still argue about which is better, analogue or digital. The consensus seems to be coming down pretty much on the digital side these days, but analogue components still makes a good case for themselves, Especially things like valve amps and of course speakers, which are very mechanical after all. I occasionally help with making classical CDs and quite often orchestras are mic'd and the levels are set, all with analogue gear. it is only digitised as it is recorded and laid on HDD/Sadie etc. But having said that all the radio and tv work I've done in the last 10 years, is digital all the way from the microphone output to the recoding itself. That can include the A>D at the mic end using things like Hydra stage boxes.

Myself, I prefer digital these days. Mainly because I detest listening to crackling and poor dig to noise. I do have a few SACDs which are pretty good, but not the huge step up I had hoped for.

ps I love the Lynn/Naim set ups

I spent a few hours in one of our dealers auditioning rooms yesterday, having some me time. It certainly proved interesting! Nearly everything was set up for streaming, however they also have a TT & CD setup available too. I was therefore able to take down some of my CD's and also some vinyl. In one instance we had the same recording on three formats, and there was less difference than I'd expected. However what became apparent in their controlled environment was the huge leap forwards in speaker technology over the last few years. It soon became clear that the speakers I was listening too took no prisoners, and bad recordings/masterings were laid bare! Good recordings shone no matter what the format, whilst poor ones (even some of the stuff I like) showed it's flaws.

I often use Eiaudi as one of my tests, as on good systems some of his recordings let you hear his breath as he holds before a note, or the movement of his feet on the pedals. And was present no matter what the format, clinically present, but perhaps a little "smoother", softer from analogue? Who knows it could just have been I'd warmed up or the LP was worn ! I also still use my brother-in-laws Sheffield Labs test record, from the days of his vinyl system (Linn LP12/Ittok/Koetsu Rosewood, Mission 776/777 & Quad Electrostatics)but with less TT's out there it hardly gets used these days, but it was good fun yesterday!

Whilst I loved the detailed and sometimes brutally accurate setups, my wife would probably find them difficult to live with as they would render some of our music almost un listenable to her! Other speakers could smooth over this a little, and would probably be easier to listen to if the recording was a bit over produced, or unduly compressed.

I guess no matter what I'm still going to enjoy the ritual of "putting a record on", whilst enjoying browsing my digital library!

To me it's like tea bags, we all use them because they are easy convenient and it's what the stores sell us, but I "expect" that when I go out for afternoon tea, that a little more effort and "ritual" goes into the experience

Right I'm going to turn off iTunes and put a CD on for a change! :rofl:

I guess no matter what I'm still going to enjoy the ritual of "putting a record on", whilst enjoying browsing my digital library!

To me it's like tea bags, we all use them because they are easy convenient and it's what the stores sell us, but I "expect" that when I go out for afternoon tea, that a little more effort and "ritual" goes into the experience

Right I'm going to turn off iTunes and put a CD on for a change! :rofl:

Bravo! Good to see the ritual is alive and kicking!

They dont put any remarks on the scratch plate of CD's like they did on records but at least you get to read the sleeve notes and if your feeling up to it colour the edge of the cd with a green marker just to absorb that stray light

Let the band play on!

ooh I've only just spotted this thread... I'm with amanda on the whole analogue vs digital thing, I work with live pa and concert sound systems and the digital sound desks are definitely the way forward, it certainly beats lugging round all the outboard racks and cabling when you can do all the dynamics processing, signal routing, patching and graphic eq on board the sound console. We tend not to use digital straight from the mic or di because of compatibility with other people's equipment but we often use digital drive racks (stage box) which connect over cat 5 Ethernet cabling back to the sound console as well as connecting the amplifier racks directly to cat 5 networks. It all sounds complicated but it works out well because the whole system can be remotely managed using iPad for setting delay lines and foh and stage monitor levels and eq settings etc.. So in all, yes digital wins but not for the reasons you may think.. It's mostly to do with the logistical cost of carrying around the heavy gear and cables in road cases, plus where you have heavy flight cases you also increase you crew costs... In terms of sound quality it's anybodies guess which sounds best, but in all fairness it doesn't make a lot of difference in the real world for live music, think of the age old adage that "**** goes in, **** comes out" plus your average punter is probably too stoned to care anyhow. However I guess that tv and recording is a different kettle of fish altogether

Anyway back to home hifi... I have my own home built valve amplifier ( mixture of kt88 and 12ax7 valves)in a class ab push pull setup... Sounds awesome plus I have home built speaker cabinets with celestion drivers and a 3 way crossover circuit which I took from a defunct piece of pa gear and modified slightly to cope with an 8ohm load... Any who I would say in response to the op that pink floyds dark side album is perfect for waking the neighbours up...

although I do like nice hifi gear, especially stuff with valves, but you still can't beat a good MOSFET transistor amplifier for true linear response and virtually undetectable signal to noise ratios. If you want less than 0.1% harmonic distortion then solid state amps Are the only way forward for faithful reproduction of a recorded sound especially for CDs. Although the trend in the 90s was to master the recording fairly bottom heavy and tail off towards the higher frequencies end due to the fact that record producers knew that Joe public would be listening to it on a pair of in ear bud headphones or on a 49.99 Argos stereo so CDs were often equalised and normalised with that in mind which can make it sound a little muddy on a decent hifi system without tweaking the settings a little.

I'm with you TT, I buy my HiFi as much by weight as anything else If it gets hot and weighs a lot, it probably sound quite good (unless it's actually on fire). It's also true about #### in equals #### out. Some of the recording studios I've been in are hanging together by bell wire and most of the mics look as though they were previously employed in building the M62

Had a chat with an old friend who has resurrected his old hifi.

He used to manufacture loudspeakers(British Audio Designs) and has an interesting if not unusual system comprising:-

Ariston RD11S Turntable/OC9

Bryston pre-amp

2 x Crimson Mono Block Amplifiers(used to be made in Stoke).

3 way Dynaudio design kit build speakers (Mahoosive)

Sony CDP101 Modified

He mantains it still knocks spots off anything he has ever heard and is glad his neighbours are far enough away not to complain!

Really enjoying the old kit of late and just cant help myself scouring the net for that little bit of vintage hifi that might be going for a song! ;0)

Really enjoying the old kit of late and just cant help myself scouring the net for that little bit of vintage hifi that might be going for a song! ;0)

Tell me about it! I've been hunting an early Cyrus Pre for years! One came up the other day and I had to let it go cos I'm totally skint as my sons Laptop went blue screen of death! Sods law says that's what happens!

Ho hum!

Interesting to read about all this old HiFi.

I started in 1955 right at the beginning of HiFi for domestic use by building a Mullard 5-10 amplifier exactly as shown on this sheet.

http://www.r-type.org/static/5-10.htm

I made up a loudspeaker using a description of a kit utilising a 10 inch Wharfedale speaker. My deck was a cheap philips turntable and arm. I could'nt afford new LPs but there was a good trade in used ones.

This served me well until stereo came in and then I had to have a stereo amp. And a tape deck.

After various upgrading over the years, 14 years ago I bought a complete Linn system (still going strong) and the down side of this is missing the fun of chopping and changing.

I was fairly late into the hifi scene in 1985 with a NAD 3130, Tehnics CD player and a pair of B&W speakers My first CD cost £13.99 when I was taking home very little as a student nurse, about £250 a month, a nice simple system. Now I can't work out which remote to use, let alone which button to press. Another down side is the cost of upgradng, standards seem to change quickly. When I upgraded my TV did the same for the amp because of HDMI switching. then when I added a dedicated bluray player and a PS3 I needed more HDMI switching which had then changed to audio/video HDMI, so another new amp was required. One seems to affect the other more so now days and its more costly. All part of the fun I suppose.

Yeah I can remember when CD's first came out & to start with you could only get them from the Hifi dealers! I once asked a guy in Our Price when would they start to stock them and he said he thought the format would never catch on due to increased cost and still having to use tapes for in-car use! LoL!

Yep as a student I blew everything I had to buy my Planar 3, A&R Arcam Alpha. Speakers escape me at the moment as i inherited them, I think they were Acoustic Research, but can't remember which! A little while later I bought a used JVC cassette deck. Finally I eventually managed to buy a Merridian MCD to complete the first full set up.