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Why Your Dad's 30-Year-Old Stereo Sounds Better Than Yours
asto21 writes "Cnet's Steve Guttenberg sheds light on this interesting development that over the years, actual sound quality became a secondary selling point since most people started buying their equipment either online or from big box retailers. People started caring more about the number of connections and wireless interfaces and wattage of systems. As a result, there was less money in R&D budgets to spend on advancements in sound."
what makes it sound good. Surely there's no need for more R&D to maintain the status quo. What sunk good sound was a desire to push down the costs.
Nullius in verba
Seriously, though - I think part of it, too, is the use of tubes 30 years ago vs now. My dad's old Teac stereo he bought in 1970 still sounds better than 95% of what I see in stores nowadays :-\
antipaucity
Shouldn't the article say more than the summary?
When someone says, "Any fool can see
Sound quality is still a selling point to people who want it, and those people will still find a wide selection of good quality components. However most consumers dont want to deal with setting up expensive speaker systems and finding the 'sweet spot' in the room etc. They just want a box that noise comes out of, and thats what they purchase.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I’d also like to throw into the pile the complete obsession with bass in the current generation. It seems to have become the major selling point of speakers at the expense of the mid and high ranges. I like to feel my rib cage rattle as much as anyone else, but I also like those sharp, crystal clear highs.
And it’s of course mandatory to point out that current music sucks, and kids these days only listen to low quality mp3 versions of it anyway and no one has an appreciation for proper sound reproduction and other such “get off my lawn” arguments ;p
I’d also like to note that modern speakers aren’t big enough! I don’t care about volume (personally I don’t like stuff ear-bleeding loud) but my dad’s huge (up to my neck) floor speakers have a presence that you just don’t get with the modern stuff I’m guessing because they just move more air due to their size.
Where'd you copy-paste that from? Oh wait, let's ask Google: From http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/digital_data_compression_musics_procrustean_bed/. Nice work, very classy.
I'll keep my old-school Cerwin Vega's thank you very much.
Sorry not true.
*My* 30 year old stereo sounds better than yours.
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
Christ...
That's not a post.. it's a damn homework assignment!
Most people buy wine to catch a buzz and are primarily concerned that the product contains sufficient alcohol and isn't totally repulsive. Some people can, or think they can, taste a difference and will pay more. Some people are concerned with impressing their guests and buy expensive stuff with a famous label whether it tastes better or not.
The patent royalties decrease the profit margin of the device, which affects all aspects of the company's budget, including R&D.
99% of popular music sounds like crap on any audio equipment. Engineers severly compress the audio dynamic range in order to make everything louder. The result is crap sounding music. You may also want to disable the virtual tin can mode on the DSP settings.
After working at Kodak for 26 years in electronic imaging and hearing nothing but "IMAGE QUALITY", I am now faced with a world where everyone is taking crappy pictures with crappy cell phone cameras. Why did we bother?? As in the stereo world, cost and convenience trump what used to be important.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
My Paradigm speakers sound pretty damn good. With the prices they charge, they have plenty of money to put into R&D. Well worth the price, IMO.
Right up through most of the 1990s power ratings differentiated models within a given manufacturer's lineup, but that's barely true anymore. In those days the least expensive models had 20 or 30 watts a channel, but now most low- to midprice receivers have around 100 watts per channel. For example, Pioneer's least expensive receiver, the VSX-521 ($250) is rated at 80 watts a channel; its VSX-1021 ($550) only gets you to 90 watts: and by the time you reach the VSX-53 ($1,100) you're only up to 110 watts per channel! Doubling the budget to $2,200 gets you 140 watts per channel from their SC-37 receiver. Denon's brand-new $5,500 AVR-5308CI delivers 150 watts per channel! The 31-year-old Pioneer SX-1980 receiver Butterworth wrote about was rated at 270 watts per channel. He tested the Pioneer and confirmed the specifications: "It delivered 273.3 watts into 8 ohms and 338.0 watts into 4 ohms." It's a stereo receiver, but it totally blew away Denon's state-of-the-art flagship model in terms of power delivery!
Emphasis mine. So I noticed that you didn't adjust the SX-1980's price into 2010 dollars so let's ask Wikipedia about the cost of an SX-1980 in today's dollars:
Its retail price in 1978 was $1295.00. According to the average historical price of gold, it would have listed for an equivalent of $8199.42 in 2010.
Okay. Show me that industry wide receivers that cost in excess of eight grand are vastly inferior to the SX-1980 and we'll have a conversation. What's the Yamaha RX-V1800 cost these days? One grand? Am I surprised your blind listening test found something that costs over eight times that amount sounds better?
Here's what you're noticing: the market of people who want to sink ten grand into a receiver (just the receiver alone!) isn't big enough for them to waste their time making the absolutely perfect everything just in the name of sound quality. You're going to design the circuit board and power output entirely devoted to sound quality? Not if you're only going to sell a hundred units.
I have a lot of audiophile friends but I don't often hear "Gee, I wish they sold an eight thousand dollar receiver devoted to sound quality so I could really blow some money to climb from the 90th to 98th percentile of sound quality."
My work here is dung.
I think one of the biggest issues is the gap in price between good products and low end stuff. I want my music to sound good and I'm willing to buy something that is 3x the cost of the everyday / low end equipment. But instead I'm given the choice between low end equipment or pro-awesome-blow-your-mind stuff that is 10 times more expensive, with nothing in between. I would love the more expensive stuff, but I just can't afford a 10,000 worth of stereo gear.
Cheap crap 30 years ago sounded just as bad as cheap crap now. Good quality audio gear wasn't cheap back then and it's not cheap now.
It was taught to respect it's elders, not like these young punk stereos you see walking around with their pants hanging off their butts. And, MY dad's stereo mowed the lawn every week without having to be told. Don't you know that builds character??
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I'm 41.
Years of listening to Rush, Van Halen, ACDC, Iron Maiden, Def Leopard, Metallica ,Yngvie Malmsteen and Joe Satriani (among others) at ear splitting volumes has probably reduced the audio reception fidelity of my ear drum to that of a crappy mid 80's Krako speaker set bought from radio shack.
So while I lament with you about the loss of speaker quality I seriously doubt I'd be able to hear the difference.
Since apparently linking to the pages with the actual content in the summary is a no-no, here they are:
First, the Cnet article talking about the test that someone else did.
Next, the actual source article.
Steve Guttenberg was amusing in the Police Academy movies (though not nearly as good as Leslie Nielsen), but why should I trust him for advice about audio gear?
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
The article's general argument (I know, I know) is that adding in all the whizbang features like Bluetooth connectivity and HD Radio, and the licensing fees involved has eaten up all the money to the point where there's little left for R&D for clearer audio. I think the problem is simpler than that, and twofold.
First, people by and large no longer actively listen to music. We listen while doing something else. Whether that 'something else' is driving, jogging, cleaning, working, or whatever else...it's no longer a sit-down activity like it was in the past. I'd argue that the most common audio output device is the iPod earbuds. They sound pretty decent for bundled earbuds, but that's like congratulating Apple for making the prettiest Terminal window for OSX. Point is, even a $500 Sony receiver with its bundled speakers is going to sound better than /that/. It's actually going to sound a LOT better than that. The floor is much lower than it was 30 years ago, therefore, it doesn't take the same amount of audio quality to greatly surpass it.
Second, most people when stereo shopping are looking for something that sounds "very good". Being as the majority of said consumers are pretty easy to please in that regard according to point #1, now Sony has to distinguish itself between Yamaha and Denon and Onkyo when they're shown next to each other. How do you do that in a way that prints well on shelf tags? Answer: good luck. That's where the arms race of having 1,001 connectors, bluetooth, XM, Pandora, laser light shows on the front, spiffy animations, 1,000,001 EQ settings, pseudo-surround from the stereo speakers, etc. all comes in to play: Bluetooth vs. no Bluetooth is very easy to distinguish. Wattage numbers are very easy to compare. "Sounds better than..." is both subjective and difficult to determine, so fighting over it would ultimately put everyone on a similar playing field. While the Slashdot Cynicism would say that it's because no one wants to have next quarter's numbers suffer on account of "doing it right", to be fair to them, how many Best Buy employees - even the ones in the home theater department - would YOU trust to accurately showcase the difference between how the different receivers sound? Have you EVER been in one where the routing panel buttons actually routed the signal properly? I haven't.
I'll use myself as a perfect example. I spend enough time in my car to replace the perfectly working stock stereo with an aftermarket one. When it came time to shop, I at least went to a store that specializes in auto and marine audio and skipped over Wal-Mart and Best Buy. I got Boston Acoustic speakers and a Kenwood deck. What attracted me to the deck was its price tag ($200 was about what I was looking to spend; the higher priced units were closer to $500-$600 and had the in-dash flat panels and navigation, etc), and its feature set. It was really nice to have a USB port and an aux in; I could charge my phone and recognize music stored on it, and I could play Pandora and make hands-free phone calls with the aux in jack. It was beautiful. A friend of mine who is one of those "Boom Car" owners - you know the type, the ones who you wouldn't exactly want leading the charge in a "surprise attack" that give you a back massage at a red light, even though you're in the opposite lane and three cars back. He had a Pioneer deck that he sold me for $60, and even did the installation for me (I installed the Kenwood, I just couldn't be bothered this time around lol). It doesn't have the USB port, the FM radio reception is mediocre on a good day (I swear that Kenwood could pick up a transmission from Mars), and I still haven't figured out how to set the preset stations for which it has no buttons (the presets are cycled through the general purpose knob, which can require a bit extra nudge at times). Every time I'm in my car I debate going back to the Kenwood deck because the Kenwood does basically everything I want it to do (except bluetooth, but neither does the Pioneer). I still haven't
True, but I think the mastering, more so than the encoding, has damaged alot of popular music.
If we take a look at how most people listen (cheap earbuds) and master to make that sound "acceptable" in order to get record sales, then those who would listen on quality gear are going to hear something completely different. The low end is overly emphasized in certain ranges, to compensate for the inability of the speaker to actually replicate that sound.
In the past, when people had dedicated stereos, the desire was there for full range sound and it was mastered as such. It modern times, music is more back ground noise, so it's mastered to be catchy and stand out at the sacrifice of overall quality.
It is actually amazing how good modern speakers can sound. If you buy higher end hardware these days it is damn impressive. However it costs more. Not more than it used to, just more than the cheap stuff.
This article is stupid because it is looking back and pretending as though 30 years ago HiFi sets were common and cheap. Not hardly. They were expensive and rare. Take the price you'd pay for one, adjust for inflation, and then see what you'd get with your money today. You'd probably be pretty impressed. Please remember that $500 in 1980 is $1,305 today. You can get a pretty heavy hitting receiver for that kind of cash.
Also 5/7.1 has to be taken in to account. Receivers are asked to do more these days, not even taking in to account the stuff he's whining about. Time was they were just amplifiers and preamplifiers for two channels, and maybe a tuner. Now they do all that for 5, 7, or more channels and handle decoding of digital formats, crossovers, maybe room correction, and so on. For all that, they still sound good, amps are not often your problem in sound quality (speakers are).
He seems to be whining that they can't make quality cheap. Well, too bad. That is a frequent problem. Quality costs money. You want quality sound? Go buy it. I love my system, it is extremely good sounding. However it did run me like $6,000 for a 5.1 setup. Don't want to spend that much? I totally understand, but you can't then cry that a $600 system doesn't sound as good.
The quality of the singers and musicians make a difference, too. Rebecca Black's Friday isn't going to sound good whether it's played on cheap, low-end gear or expensive, high-end stuff,. . . Garbage in, garbage out.
Sure - I remember my Dad's 30 year old radio, a Philco model 60 from 1936. Those thirty years were the the golden age of radio I caught just the tail end in the late1950's.
His cathedral radio glowed in the dark, thanks to 5 vacuum tubes and an incandescent dial lamp. Took a minute to warm up (boot?) thanks to the 6 volt filaments and sagging line voltage (the thing drew 60 watts just idling). Superhetrodyne tuning of the AM broadcast band gave it a response from perhaps 50 to 2000 Hz, give or take 10 db. Stereo? Naw it didn't even have FM (though you could tune in shortwave broadcasts from Moscow)
Fidelity? Well, the Lone Ranger theme came boomed in just fine, as did Jack Benny, Elvis, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper. Nothing like staying up late to tune the latest releases from WKBW, CKLW, or WABCs Cousin Brucie. Or joining the Night People to catch Jean Shepherd on WOR after midnight.
I've heard plenty of music since then, on vinyl, cassette, 8-track, CD's and mp3 -- great stuff! But I miss the excitement of stalking the elusive Rock and Roll station...
Bigger speakers are generally going to have more presence because the speaker drivers themselves have better impedance with the air at low frequencies, and the heavier drivers tend to be more efficient at that frequency range. A good 10-12 inch driver should be able to get all the way down to 20hz, which is about the limit of human hearing; (though frequencies below that can still be felt.) With a modern speaker using a smaller 6 inch driver to produce low frequencies, the bottom end of the range will either be lost, or it will have to be normalized to the midrange; doing so tends to induce distortion.
More or less the top-of-the-line in consumer grade speakers is the Klipschhorn, which horn loads the tweeter and midrange, and uses the interior of the cabinet and your wall to horn load the woofer. The horns again deliver better impedance with the air, making it one of the most efficient speakers on the market. It's capable of producing 105db of sound from one watt of input power.
For what it's worth, I'm in my late 20s and grew up listening to a lot of the classics. I love Zep, and a number of others. There's good stuff coming out now too, but if all you do is listen to the radio, you're unlikely to hear it.
Sometime in the early 20th century RCA did an experiment where they had people come into a room where opera music was playing. They had the test subject adjust two dials until the music sounded 'best'.
The result was half the subjects turned both dials all the way down. The other half adjusted the dials to the midpoints.
The two dials were for treble and bass. Half the test subjects were people who went to a lot of live opera performances. The other half where people who listened mostly to the radio. The live listeners adjusted the dials to the midpoint, matching the sound they usually listen to. The other half listened over the radio. They adjusted the dials all the way down because that's how radio sounds.
The moral of the story- what "sounds best" depends a lot on what you think "sounds best", and is not necessarily a measure of accurate sound reproduction.
So true. The type of amps that give the best sound quality can be very in-efficient, 20 to 30%. If the output efficiency is 75 to 90% there is no way the system is producing the sound clearly, for a power outlet that has 1500W available the best stereos produce only 200 W, per channel because that is all the power that they can convert to sound. So when someone states they have a 2000W stereo they are quoting instantaneous power. The true marker of power is Total Harmonic Distortion at a given power rating, unfortunately there are several different power meaurements, peak, RMS, instantaneous, all which vary based on the limit of THD. Also most power ratings are at 1000Hz so that is much higher than the base frequencies that should be considered. I deal with newer PA power amps and the name brand QSC and Crown amps deliver power and sound quality, but the main thing limiting sound quality for most good equipment, that I see is source quality, MP3 are no comparison to CD and high quality records, which are harder to come by now, so "Get off my Lawn!".
Yea but if it was what people preferred, then it was better. And it was what people preferred except for portables and car radios.
:>|
Up to about the 1950's, radio companies did not care what % distortion an amp had; they experimented with different amp circuits and depended mainly on polls of ordinary people listening and choosing which one sounded better. It is possible to design a tube audio amp with a very low amount of distortion {--tube amps are still used as the final stage of radio broadcasting systems, because no transistor can handle that much power--} but the low-distortion tube audio amps were not the ones most people preferred the sound of. The distortion is there because (similar to guitar tube amps) most people liked it better that way. And many commercial studio recordings are STILL mastered on tube equipment and analog tape, even now. Didja ever wonder why?....
The only reason tubes got forced out of the market to the extent they have is because transistors got cheaper. If the cheapest home-stereo tube amp was as cheap as the cheapest transistor home-stereo amp, I'd be willing to bet that most people would choose the tubes.
I consider myself a semi-audiophile; I am old enough to recall when TVs and non-portable radios had tubes. Tubes just plain sound right,,,,, and modern solid-state amps aren't the same. I haven't shopped much for high-end home stereos, but I've seen a few rather expensive ones and a few monsters and you can't get the tube sound by messing with an EQ.
Another factor however is that music production today is generally shit. Commercial songs are put on albums (CDs) compressed just so they'll play louder on the radio, and it takes all the life out of them. They do not sound real anymore.
As much as I'd like a tube amp setup, I don't own one (they cost $$$$ considering that I have not much time to listen really) and no record collection (most music I like is post-1980)
If you ever get the chance to do a side-by-side listening test of a tube and transistor amp, I highly encourage it. Even if all you have to listen to is a modern CD, you can still hear the difference.
My favorite, is people that buy high end stuff and then mix it.
Like wine, sure there are some subtle differences between "normal" and "high end". However all that is lost when you mix it with coke, juice, or whatever you favorite is. If you don't like to drink straight up, then don't bother wasting you money making Grey Goose Screwdrivers or Patron Margaritas...
Not even taking electronics into account, speakers back then seem to have been better. Everything was had at least 2 10" woofers, mids and tweeters. Now you get this crap subwoofers, and then two crap cubes for the rest of your sound? Hard to find good speakers without spending a lot of money. I remember being able to by even Sony big box speakers at regular stores ~15 years ago.