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HiFi: old man's (end)game?

Tony L said:
The thing with audio is there is just so much totally amazing stuff floating around the used market and will be for a very long time as it was just so well made. Again referring back to a post I made earlier on the thread a lot of younger folk totally get this. Whenever I see younger folk on YouTube talking about their record collections (and I actively seek them out) they tend to have a) a nice retro system, say SL1200, 70s Marantz Receiver and nice chunky vintage speakers, b) something modern like a Rega P3 and LS50s, or c) some real cheap piece of crap Crossley or whatever. I’d say it split around evenly across those categories, actually far more to the first two. Obviously this is a subset of music buyers, more than that, music buyers who are prepared to spend a lot on new vinyl and enjoy the dignified hobby of record bin-diving. This inevitably preselects people that care a lot about music in its physical form. I’m sure a vastly higher number get huge enjoyment from streaming through a HomePod or whatever. To be fair I bet a pair of them is pretty decent (I definitely couldn’t live with one!).
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The price of high-quality second-hand analogue gear is steadily creeping up though. I'd be a rich man if I had bought all the Garrard 301/401s that were once available on eBay for £200 (or less) when they were out of fashion. Similarly, I very nearly bought a mint Sony Pro Walkman for £170 a few years ago and these are now over £500. High-quality engineering will hold or increase its value, the challenge now is finding the items that are slightly more obscure. In the pro-audio market, there are also some exceptional bargains made in the 80s or 90s (if you want 15" drivers and huge dynamics), provided you can find the gear that hasn't been utterly thrashed.

I also have to say Tony, that PFM is a great place to buy and sell gear, I have had nothing but positive experiences here, it is much better than the alternatives!
 
Tony L said:
I lived in Windsor for a while which was right under the flightpath. Astonishing the amount of noise that came from such a small aircraft!
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I worked at Heathrow "LHR" from 1978 until 1983 at the long term parking, located along side the northern perimeter road.

The main and west LT car park ran adjacent to Heathrow's
main runway.

Concorde departed LHR every day at 11:00 hours am and returned at 19:00 hours pm.

If at work, I would step out of our office to watch the take-offs and landings.

I never once got tired of this, as we all had to hang to our drinking vessels on our desks when Concorde departed.

The "Victor VC10s" were louder than Concorde, their engines really cracked up the air when they took off.

Jono_13 said:
As a son of Windsor we saw it twice a day most days and after the noise the best thing was the couple of minutes silence before the next trash hauler came in thanks to the residual turbulence it caused.
And on the day of the first commercial flight my school lessons were rearranged so that we could watch it flying out.
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Many Many celebs must have seen me through the Concordes viewing port holes as I watched their arrivals and departures.

I lost count how many times I saw the great bird fly in and out of LHR
 
I wasn’t there too long. I was at T4 throwing a load of Compaq 3000 series rack servers running Cytrix into a logistics company. The early days of ‘thin client’ computing and really lacking the bandwidth to work well, but it was what they wanted so it is what they got! One area was warehousing and you could walk out the big doors onto the air-side area and get a great view of planes landing etc. I’m sure that wouldn’t be possible post 9/11! I don’t think I was meant to then, but what the hell, may as well have a look!
 
I actually feel rather buoyed up at the prospects for proper hifi. I've been chatting with a couple of manufacturers recently and frankly most are having the best years they have ever had. Many are reporting sales are so high they are having to work their factories 24 hours a day and Naim are having to boost production via a Czech subcontractor. I approached Sugden to do a review and they told me they just didn't need it as they are running with a 10 month waiting list at present!!

The British hi-fi industry is in very strong health indeed. Not sure if it's the pandemic or the resurgence of vinyl or a bit of both. Certainly the resurgence of vinyl has brought a lot of people in who are from a younger demographic and it will be interesting to see if they are represented at for example the Bristol hi-fi show in a couple of weeks. Certainly the Guildford record fair I attended a couple of weeks back had a pleasing number of younger people there and HMV is always pretty full of younguns buying music mostly on vinyl while the middle aged codgers like me with large mortgages and kids float about dreaming of all the stuff we'd like to buy if only we could afford the £25 per disc!! My Daughter works 4 days a month in student job and earns pretty much £400 a month which is all disposable income to her. Frankly I can only dream of having that much spare to piss away on records and beer each month... lol!!

Birdseed
 
I’m not yet an old man-not yet I hope- but as I get older I look for what I’d like in the vintage line. I find much new hifi either overly generic or just too expensive for what it actually is and does. I therefore look into the past to gear I lusted after when I was younger. It’s generally more affordable and brings its own flavour. My Rotel phono and cd player and A&R tuner feel as if they were built to last and of course they have. They sound great for their age and are still competitive. Mostly they make me smile. They pull me into my music. For a few pennies really. And if they go wrong, they are generally replaceable for a few pennies rather than £££s. I don’t have a great amount of money to spend so having the second hand, vintage market is very important to me. I don’t feel I have an endgame as my main aim is to ensure that the gear doesn’t get in the way of the music. It needs to allow the Music to communicate without any doubts.
 
John Channing said:
I also have to say Tony, that PFM is a great place to buy and sell gear, I have had nothing but positive experiences here, it is much better than the alternatives!
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+1 I only buy and sell here and if something doesn't sell here I don't sell it. I don't sell to zero posters of whom there are a lot more these days. Can't be bothered with eBay et al anymore.
 
James said:
Call me old fashioned, but I don't get the point of silent disco.

Whilst I generally accept that high quality cans sacrifice nothing in terms of sound quality, I can't stand the claustrophobia of not being able to hear what else might be going on in my environment. Is that someone knocking on my door?
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I've had two silent discos at parties. With 2 or 3 channels to choose from it is great fun. Oldies can have their 70s/80s hits and teens their own stuff and on one occasion a live DJ was manning the third feed. The whole room was bouncing around the dance floor. When you took the headphones off and headed to the bar, listening to 3 different songs being tunelessly belted out by the whole party is hilarious. Everyone had a great time.
 
Cesare said:
My teenage son showed little interest in music, but frankly, commercial music is aimed at teenage girls not boys, and it's all pretty boring. He played *lots* of computer games, and really appreciated the music in films.

Wind on a few years, and he's now 22, and goes out gigging all the time. The live music scene is much more interesting than recorded music. He's studying sound design at uni, and spends his spare time helping out with live sound at local venues and exploring field recording.

So don't give up on them - you may find that their interest changes when they get to experience local bands in dank basements, which to be fair, is what music is really all about, none of this hifi replay at home nonsense ;)
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My youngest daughter has gone on I a similar journey, at 16 her band was playing some of the larger local venues, and over the past 10 years it has become her life, she has a reasonable hifi system too, along with her stacks of live music gear.
Surprisingly my eldest son has become very into vinyl these last few years, and headphones for that matter. Although in my experence, his latest £750 headphones do not for one minute give the reproduction that my diy speakers provide, but in a semi detached open plan, they give him the freedom to listen when he wants, and at probably at a similar level to his ns1000's.
I like them, but have no use at all for headphones in my life.
 
Neither my kids, (30+ years) nor any of my neighbors care for HiFi, in fact I think they look at my modern floor standing speakers as a bit of a throwback to the 70's.

Given that they all seem to manage quite happily in life without recourse to such gargantuan apparatus I am beginning to think that they might have a point.
 
Darmok said:
I worked at Heathrow "LHR" from 1978 until 1983 at the long term parking, located along side the northern perimeter road.

The main and west LT car park ran adjacent to Heathrow's
main runway.

Concorde departed LHR every day at 11:00 hours am and returned at 19:00 hours pm.

If at work, I would step out of our office to watch the take-offs and landings.

I never once got tired of this, as we all had to hang to our drinking vessels on our desks when Concorde departed.

The "Victor VC10s" were louder than Concorde, their engines really cracked up the air when they took off.



Many Many celebs must have seen me through the Concordes viewing port holes as I watched their arrivals and departures.

I lost count how many times I saw the great bird fly in and out of LHR
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Used to love seeing it flying over Blackheath heading down into Heathrow .
 
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