Amplifier Experts?

[KS]

I regularly play vinyl as my main/preferred source of music - I still have ~750 albums.

Despite many bearing the scars of decades of use I'd far rather listen to them - crackles & all - than clinical 'digitally re-mastered' sterile versions ...

- & there's no substitute for being able to handle the original outer jacket/cover, read the sleeve notes, etc ...

You, sir, have struck the proverbial nail squarely on the head. Chapeau!

[Chris_911]

Look for an A&R Cambridge A60??

Still regret selling mine.....

[mycar]

Your'e in luck !

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/A-R-Cambridg ... :rk:1:pf:0

I do wonder how the capacitors will be in 40 year old amp and would replacing them change the sound ?

Review here for the misty eyed.

https://www.whathifi.com/features/was-t ... m-a19-2013

[neilbardsley]

Seems they quite like it!

Sent from my HTC One M9 using Tapatalk

[Ashley James]

I listen with HD800s or active speakers that are almost indistinguishable from them, so am used to much higher quality sound than most. I recommended the Yamaha because it is, to all intents and purposes, transparent and it’ll be reliable. When the AR60 was current I had the original Sony Esprit set up and 801s, so wasn’t impressed. Now it’ll sound rough and dull.

Much better to buy new from a top company IMO.

[neilbardsley]

My colleague has a Cyrus 8a he doesn't use. The reviews seem they say they are a good but a above my budget. Anybody used them?

[hot66]

I used to run Arcam stuff , loved them

These days I have music everywhere rather than just in one room , so I stream everything , wether in the car , via portable speaker systems or even amazon echos

[richkaz]

Last amp I bought was in 1983 and I've still got it.
I was told the following by Hi Fi Experience in Tottenham Court Road .
1. There's no such thing as better or worse with amplifier's. Most important is the type of music that's listened to and your ethnicity.
Apparently the inner ear of a European / Caucasian is slightly different to Asian ears. A European / Caucasian often finds Japanese amplifiers
just a tad on the tinny side.compared to Caucasian / European amps.
2. I told them that the reproduction of classical music was my priority. I didn't require a deep bass response but wanted the music to
be clean, transparent with good stereo sound stage. My budget was £ 1500 ( suppose would feel like £ 3k today ?)
They reckoned that my tastes would be best served with British equipment and recommended the latest Celestion DL8 metal domed speakers paired to an Audiolab amp .
They invited me into their studio and played Dvorak's New World as there's a lot happening on this piece.
The system sounded great and I agreed to take it.They then replaced the Audiolab with a reference valve amp from the American company Krell costing £ 28,000 !
This was half the price of my London flat at the time.
If the Krell was the 10 / 10 gold standard , I judged the Audiolab to be pretty close to 9 / 10
The Krell did sound slightly 'warmer' and I'm sure that in a much larger room or concert hall the Krell would win hands down but the Audiolab was very impressive.
Not sure if the ethnicity thing or type of music is still important after all these years ?

[neilbardsley]

After all that I've found somewhere to repair it for £80 in the West of London. I like the idea of reusing that I already have.

[911MRP]

The impression I got was that Neil was after a modern amp along the lines of the one which needs replacing. If you're getting into the realms of classic stuff, well, that's a whole different ball game... My Onkyo is a stand in while I get my Sugden A48 Series 2 overhauled. When that's done, the Onkyo will go back in its box until the next time.

Hi Keith. Blast from past, inherited similar Sugden amp from my late father. Nice sound. He also had lot of Radford amps and speakers -- got them stored somewhere too. Quite big things to mislay:) He was an electronics engineer always tinkering so I used to get dragged along to the annual show at Harrogate as a kid. Left to roam the halls of the hotels usually with a school pal for company. Got an appreciation of good quality gear by immersion. Fond memories. When he passed away there was every edition of iirc wireless world and similar dating back to the fifties in the loft of the family home. I couldn't keep it but did salvage the schematics for the Radford amp and speakers.

[KS]

It's a lovely piece of Brit-built kit, a real 'thumper' when necessary (great for Pink Floyd, etc), but also a warm sound when playing acoustic or folk. I had two and kept the better one. Buttons are starting to get a little sticky, hence the need for a service. Gotta love the design!

[Ashley James]

Last amp I bought was in 1983 and I've still got it.
I was told the following by Hi Fi Experience in Tottenham Court Road .
1. There's no such thing as better or worse with amplifier's. Most important is the type of music that's listened to and your ethnicity.
Apparently the inner ear of a European / Caucasian is slightly different to Asian ears. A European / Caucasian often finds Japanese amplifiers
just a tad on the tinny side.compared to Caucasian / European amps.
2. I told them that the reproduction of classical music was my priority. I didn't require a deep bass response but wanted the music to
be clean, transparent with good stereo sound stage. My budget was £ 1500 ( suppose would feel like £ 3k today ?)
They reckoned that my tastes would be best served with British equipment and recommended the latest Celestion DL8 metal domed speakers paired to an Audiolab amp .
They invited me into their studio and played Dvorak's New World as there's a lot happening on this piece.
The system sounded great and I agreed to take it.They then replaced the Audiolab with a reference valve amp from the American company Krell costing £ 28,000 !
This was half the price of my London flat at the time.
If the Krell was the 10 / 10 gold standard , I judged the Audiolab to be pretty close to 9 / 10
The Krell did sound slightly 'warmer' and I'm sure that in a much larger room or concert hall the Krell would win hands down but the Audiolab was very impressive.
Not sure if the ethnicity thing or type of music is still important after all these years ?

The advice was good to the extent that provided they satisfy certain parameters, it’s impossible to hear differences between amplifiers, even ones with valves.

However hi fi sales died with the arrival of the VCR when the Japanese giants ceased importing all but the cheapest they made because the market wasn’t big enough to warrant the expense. This left a niche for small Brit companies to fill and most didn’t have qualified engineers and so didn’t produce anything worthy of note. Kef and B&W led the world in their day, but we never had much of a reputation for amplifiers etc. The Japanese home market had incredible product, but much too costly for the Brits.

America being America and more patriotic designed speakers that were such a nasty load they’d blow up amps designed to IEC standards. Then they produced the likes of Krell that would heat a 6" nail if you shorted the speaker terminals with it. This bought them the market until multi channel AV polished off the two channels.

It’s also true that classical music is the only true test of a system simply because it is generally recorded in the most purist way and tends to be less manipulated in post production. It has to sound as near as possible to the performance and its complex so requires great clarity.

Modern popular music evolved around the systems on which is was most listened to, so portable radios and cars though now the headphone market in the UK is over £150 million and specialist audio probably rather less than £20 million. A popular music producer selects his monitors not so much on clarity or neutrality as whether or not his mix sounds good in the car or on a portable radio. After he’s finished with it, everything may still be compressed, emphasised and tonally manipulated by a mastering engineer to suit record company requirements. One of the goals has always been to make your music sound the loudest on radio or whatever.

[gridgway]

Build your own? (nice slippers by the way!)
IMG_20190101_142350 by graham Ridgway, on Flickr

[mycar]

Are those a warm booty slipper with a zip ?

Perfect footwear for listening to early British amplification.

What's all this about a home made amplifiers ?

Sounds marvellous.

Class D ?

[gridgway]

I'm a bit of a hifi hobbyist, although I don't know much!

I've got loads of kit in my house. I've got a bit of a full-on setup in the AV room with Naim amps and B&W floor standers. It's got a Linn LP-12 record player and I had a CD-12 CD player, then that went for a Linn Klimax DS.
I've got a lesser Linn DS and B&W setup in the dining room.

I've got an early set of MP3 streamers from Slim Devices (I even met Sean Adams the founder in their warehouse unit in Mountain View) in the early 2000s. There is a variety of amps and speakers including a pair of O level woodwork speakers in the garage. The SLIMP3s are slowly dying over time. I wish I knew enough about electronics to fix them!

And I just love it all. Could I blind-test work out what was what and tell the difference? Dunno. Certainly the B&W 802s will be distinguishable from the Anthony Gallo satellite speakers in the kitchen.

Then I started my DIY projects trying stuff for fun. I wanted to get digital audio out of a Raspberry pi one Christmas. So bought some stuff from HK to do an I2S DAC job. Was interesting, but good. Then I got a Class D amp kit which cost about £8 from China. It's known as the Chinese Takeaway amp as it's housed in a plastic takeaway box. I've moved on to the Hifiberry DACs now with the pi as they work really well. So MP3s through a pi+Dac with the £8 amp to some old Technics cheap speakers in my study raises the hairs on my arms it sounds so good!

I also moved the super expensive Linn DS on from my AV room system and use a pi with hifiberry DAC playing lossless files. Sounds brilliant too.

The pic above is a class A amp (the "Amp Camp Amp"), another xmas project. Not finished yet, so no idea how that'll sound.

I've got the hardware kit (drive units, crossover components etc) for some speakers - Jeff Bagby's Continuum design, being an homage to the Rogers BBC Monitors. They are next.

I've got all the hardware for a "boombox mini". One day I'll build a valve amp too.

It's all a bit hit and miss and fun. I don't know enough to design anything, but I'm enjoying other people's designs. One limiting factor is power. I'm a bit scared of mains power and all that transformer stuff. Relying on power brick technology isn't all that good (ok though). Maybe one day.

Sorry for the ramble. And the great thing is I love the music as well as the technology.

Graham
And no they haven't got zips, what kind of person do you take me for!