Have I influenced you into remembering how good analogue sounded ... or initiated you into trying to find out if the legend of vinyl can be true? If either answer is yes, mission accomplished!!!
I thought I would take this opportunity to talk about building your system.There are a few things to consider when building a system ... how big is your listening area? How big is your budget? What are you trying to accomplish? Those three questions and their answers are critical before we move forward. We must also remember that W.A.F. is critical here ... (uh, that means Wife Approval Factor)! If you are fortunate enough to have a wife like my Kelly, then the WAF disappears, she is as much as fan as I am.
Listening area is going to determine how much wattage, (power), you need from your electronics. It will also determine the speaker size that will fit your room. By the way, since I mentioned speaker size, relax! I am so tired of hearing people state that they think speaker size equates to sound quality ... not! Also I should mention I get so tired of hearing, "they were really loud ..." please understand, quantity will NEVER have anything to do with QUALITY! The loud statement probably meant "lots of distortion". But back to room size.
Most of us would be lucky to have a dedicated listening room. If you do not, no problem, we can make this work. A 10x10 room will be plenty for a solid vintage system. This system, to keep it simple, should be driven by a receiver. It includes a power amplifier, pre amplifier and radio tuner in one box. You can find receivers producing as little as 8 watts a channel and as much as 125 watts a channel. Either extreme will work in the described room size. Your budget will determine which end of the spectrum works best for you. We could talk about integrated amplifiers, power amps and pre amps ... the idea here is to keep it simple and enjoy a great sounding vintage system that rivals or outplays anything on the market today, so a receiver makes the most sense.
How many music sources do you want? Are you interested in a turntable, cassette deck, reel to reel, CD's, (the ANTI-ANALOGUE), this will determine what receiver you need based on the connections it provides. Most vintage receivers provide enough auxiliary terminals to meet whatever criteria you have in mind. Make sure you have a plan as to how many music sources you intend to use before buying a receiver. Next consideration will be speakers.
There are many great, well known brands of vintage speaker systems available at relatively low prices. Some brands will be JBL, (beware what model you buy, research before you pull the trigger), Polk Audio Monitor, (if you can, get original model 7 or 10, not the B, C or whatever designation was used), A/D/S, Infinity, EPI or Epicure, (same brand), Genesis, Snell ... you can further research speakers by visiting AudioKarma.org. Lots of information there about vintage systems in general. I would be wrong if I did not mention brands such as Acoustic Research, a great speaker, as well as ElectroVoice!! But let's move on to a sample of a vintage system ... mine!
I have built my vintage system based on a time frame, 1974 / 1982. It includes one of the finest integrated amps ever produced by Sansui (AU717) , a couple of turntables that are legendary, (SOTA, Luxman), a Teac reel to reel and a legendary Nakamichi RX-2 auto reverse cassette deck. Speakers are the original Polk Audio Monitor 10's. This system rivals my current NAD C375BEE, (integrated amp, rated class B by Audiophile magazine), driven system which includes Von Schweikert VR2 speakers, Olive music server and ClearAudio Emotion table with Maestro cartridge.
For less than $600.00, if you research equipment properly, your listening room can boast a system that will rival anything in the contemporary 6k range. If you are not as old as I am, Google as much equipment as you can, it will pay off in the long run!! Next I will begin to talk about different vintage brands and how they compare, until then, "listen to the music!!"
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