In praise of old kit....

[tdm34]

Well i've had a very interesting week, after putting up with the Onkyo 828 having the musical ability of a toast rack I finally decided to get rid! well found a buyer and sold it on (he's mega-happy with the deal btw)

So I dig out my old Pioneer LX53 that the Onkyo had replaced (the reason i'd replaced it with the Onkyo was that it had gone faulty! it was supposedly repaired by Superfi but i'd never checked it was fixed)

Connected it all up and guess what? yup you guessed it! it still has the same issue (randomly switching off for a split second) thankfully it's still under warranty so it's off to be repaired for a second time....

So as it took 4 weeks last time I decide to see if I can buy something to tide me over until it comes back
so I set a budget of £100 to buy an amp, after a bit of scouring evilbay, gumtree and avforums classifieds
I find an old Denon AVC-A11SR that's near me, ring up the seller and he says it's mint etc, so I toddle off to have a peep, and it's not mint, no nothing like mint! it's absolutely perfect, unmarked in its original box and packaging with a perfect remote control and instruction manual! and he wants £100 for it! so I don't barter, I just pay the man and struggle off home with this behemoth!

Now! I know it doesn't have HDMI or any of the Lossless audio codecs (DTS-HD master audio or Dolby TrueHD) or any streaming or bluetooth stuff, but it does have an analogue 7.1 input.

So Sunday lunchtime I rip out the Pioneer and set to work,





After 3 hours it's in place, after discovering that my Pioneer LX55 BluRay player doesn't have an on-board analogue decoder so I have to wire it up with an optical cable so i'll just get Dolby/DTS 5.1 I have a quick listen and bugger me! it sounds fking amazing! and on CD it's producing the best sound my 104/2s have ever made in my lounge!

So I have a quick peep at evilbay and find a Sony BDP-S760 that's just about to end, I put in a cheeky £50 bid and subsequently win it!

It's arrived today and tonight i'll plumb it in utilising the 7.1 input the Amp has.



if you look closely at the rhs of the BD player you'll see the analogue cables I put in so I don't have to haul the 24kg monster out of its slot!

Can't wait!!!

so these two things cost me only £150 and so far it sounds truly amazing, it just goes to prove that with a bit of care you can pick up some amazing bargains out there.

I'll report back tomorrow.....

[varsas]

Yep, still have an old Yahamah DSP-A595a that's fantastic. And yes, also has those handy analogue inputs so you could have full on 24bit/96k audio if I wanted. The only thing it really misses is any form of calibration, but I wonder if you could get better results with your ear and a level meter anyway...

I did buy a new Sony 820 but I'll be keeping the Yamaha too...one day I'll do a comparison and we'll see...

P.S. Have a new Samsung £100 blu-ray player and while it's great it's mechanism is really noisy, my old Samsung(?) DVD player (which did cost £320...) never did that...get what you pay for.

Edited by varsas on Tuesday 18th March 19:57

[Mr_Yogi]

Yes, I'd much rather have a high end legacy amp with DD/ DTS than a cheaper new model with DTHD,/ DTS MA. I used to have a Tag AV32R, it sounded fantastic with plain old DD/ DTS. Also I'm pretty sure up until recently cinemas had bitrates lower than your average DTS sound track.

[Troubleatmill]

I like valve amps. 90 odd year old technology - and in my (and many others) thoughts - still sounds amazing.

[stevoknevo]

You snaffled an absolute bargain there! Those Denons retailed at £2k back in the day.

I thought I got a good deal about 3 or 4 years ago when I picked up a Denon AVR 3803 in the same condition as yours for £150. That replaced a Marantz SR 5200 AV receiver that stopped decoding and would only play in stereo, and a very early Sony dvp525 dvd player; so that's in the holiday gaff and does sterling duties for music and movies. I paid about £800 for those two and you pick them up on ebay now for about 4p the pair

Can you keep us updated on how you get on with the analogue inputs from the bluray player; I'm about to make the leap in to the 21st century and buy a flat screen TV and a BD player and want to run it through the Denon, like you are. Just wondering about setting it up etc and also if it sounds a lot better than a DVD?

[tdm34]

Just finished installing the player, and as a duo connected
Via the 7.1 analogue connections it utterly destroys the Onkyo
That was there before it!
I can't play things too loud as SWMBO is in bed directly above
The lounge, but at low volume levels there's miles more detail

Tomorrow will see the volume turned up!!!

Thus far I'm really happy with the kit.

[varsas]

stevoknevo said:

if it sounds a lot better than a DVD?

BluRay sounds much better then DVD. It's not as much of a difference as the picture but it is noticeable. Some DVD's (Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, 640kbps) sound pretty much as good as bluray, but most are encoded at about 384k (for 5.1 channels!) and sound pretty ropey when compared.

[Mr_Yogi]

varsas said:

BluRay sounds much better then DVD. It's not as much of a difference as the picture but it is noticeable. Some DVD's (Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, 640kbps) sound pretty much as good as bluray, but most are encoded at about 384k (for 5.1 channels!) and sound pretty ropey when compared.

I believe that is very dependant on your kit, sure with the same kit there may be an improvement with TrueHD/ DTS-MA, but a high end legacy DD/ DTS system should out perform a modern mid range system with lossless audio. Most cinemas up until last year only used 320kb/s (Dobly Digital) for all 5 channels and I've rarely bee disappointed with the modern multiplex sound systems.

[clived]

Totally agree with this - I have a AVC-A1SR that I bought new and all these years on have no inclination to replace. I have just bought an Oppo to replace the matching DVD-2900 I bought at the time as I was a bit bored of running that and a separate Blu-ray player and it has really bought a new lease of life to the Denon using the analogue inputs and letting the Oppo do all the decoding, streaming, USB DAC etc. stuff.

[tdm34]

Well! Day off so I can play with volume across a variety of scenes that I'm very familiar with
Using films such as Angels & Demons, Kingdom of Heaven, Skyfall and music
BDs such as Rush's Clockwork Angels and R30 and Led Zeps celebration day

All I'll say is "fk yeh!" It works astonishingly well and has breathed a new lease of
Life into my Kef/Rel speaker package!

For those who're interested they're the following

Fronts: Kef Reference 104/2
Center: Kef Reference 200c
Surround: Kef Reference TDM34ds
Surround Backs: Kef Reference TDM34ds
Subs REL Storm x 2

Just do it!

[varsas]

Mr_Yogi said:

varsas said:

BluRay sounds much better then DVD. It's not as much of a difference as the picture but it is noticeable. Some DVD's (Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, 640kbps) sound pretty much as good as bluray, but most are encoded at about 384k (for 5.1 channels!) and sound pretty ropey when compared.

I believe that is very dependant on your kit, sure with the same kit there may be an improvement with TrueHD/ DTS-MA, but a high end legacy DD/ DTS system should out perform a modern mid range system with lossless audio. Most cinemas up until last year only used 320kb/s (Dobly Digital) for all 5 channels and I've rarely bee disappointed with the modern multiplex sound systems.

Oh, of course. But all else being equal, and even on a fairly modest system, the change is noticeable and the great thing about the amps we're talking about is that they have the line level inputs to allow you to use fully loss less audio anyway so there's no need to change your old high-end kit to new mid-range kit to benefit. I have a few films on DVD and BluRay and they do sound better. Of course DVD's are fully capable of having really very good audio (1,500kbps) but most are recorded at a poor bitrate.

Interesting point you make about cinema's. I really don't like the typical 'cinema' sound, all boomy and soft, I reckon my system sounds better most of the time. Not sure if that's down to the bit rate, the equipment, volume level (I know they are calibrated to 105DB but I reckon it's too high) or the size of the room...

Edited by varsas on Wednesday 19th March 13:18

[bodhi]

As an aside, is that a CD-63 KI signature I spot in the rack below it? If so, big respect, I have one at the mother's house, it just has issues with any CD's which are less than perfect. Got a PM66 to match it too - sadly it only plays out of one channel at the moment.

I do miss the KI-Signature clarity and punch.

[tdm34]

bodhi said:

As an aside, is that a CD-63 KI signature I spot in the rack below it? If so, big respect, I have one at the mother's house, it just has issues with any CD's which are less than perfect. Got a PM66 to match it too - sadly it only plays out of one channel at the moment.

I do miss the KI-Signature clarity and punch.

Yup! it sure is! i've had it for 15 years iirc, and it hasn't missed a beat! (touches Wood) fantastic sound quality.

[telecat]

My Audio Innovations 500, Meridian 200 and Systemdek XII all date back to 1992. Impulse Lali's I obtained in 2002, Chord DAC64 2005 and Denon DVD-2900 2007ish. It would take a lot to make me change them.

[bodhi]

tdm34 said:

Yup! it sure is! i've had it for 15 years iirc, and it hasn't missed a beat! (touches Wood) fantastic sound quality.

I can certainly agree on the fantastic quality, mine wasn't particularly reliable sadly, think it's on its 3rd transport now, and the amp blew it's output stage after 6 years. Worth fixing though for the quality on offer. eve though they both need fixing again I am still keen to get it done.

Are transports still available for them?

[sparkyhx]

telecat said:

My Audio Innovations 500, Meridian 200 and Systemdek XII all date back to 1992. Impulse Lali's I obtained in 2002, Chord DAC64 2005 and Denon DVD-2900 2007ish. It would take a lot to make me change them.

similar thing here - I have a Pink Triangle turntable, Musical Fidelity Amp and original Mission 753's all 20+ years old. I've just bought a pair of original Acoustic Energy AE1's (again +20) which are sitting next to the Missions for comparison reasons. (i know floorstanders back to 'bookshelves' should be seen as a backward step....but its not).

'named' old stuff still attracts decent prices. I paid £450 for the AE1's all in. The equivalent now is circa 1.5k but when these were originally brought out I seem to remember them being circa £600 - so not much lost in that intervening 20 years.

I'm also looking at amps cos I want a remote control one. Stuff 10-15 years old is still commanding 50% or more of the original price. I'm not talking the bog std consumer stuff but the higher end stuff even the higher end Jap stuff.

Edited by sparkyhx on Thursday 20th March 14:12

[J4CKO]

Arent old AV amps hard work due to the lack of HDMI ?

[tdm34]

J4CKO said:

Arent old AV amps hard work due to the lack of HDMI ?

You'd think so, but as long as they have an analogue 5.1/7.1 input (and most do!) and you get a BD player
with a similar output and an onboard decoder then all you are doing is shifting where the decoding is done
most people only need three HDMI inputs one for a Virgin/Sky box, one for a BluRay player and one for a games
console maybe, most modern TVs have at least that many so you just connect them directly. Now as Virgin/Sky only have Dolby Digital 5.1 then an optical cable between the box and the amp suffices, modern games console have support for the lossless codecs but most people would be totally happy with
Dolby Digital 5.1 feed, so again an optical cable direct to the amp works perfectly well.

I know that HDMI switching is supposed to make life a lot easier, but over the years i've loads of customers
have problems with HDMI handshaking through amps, so this way it takes a bit of learning but it becomes second nature quickly

Also since going direct from source to display I swear the picture looks a little better!

Edited by tdm34 on Thursday 20th March 17:03

[OldSkoolRS]

tdm34 said:

Also since going direct from source to display I swear the picture looks a little better!

I'm not surprised...I found it quite a battle to ensure my AVR's video processing was completely bypassed as it required setting changes in more than one place (Onkyo 818). Since I use an external high quality Lumagen video processor I don't want anything in the AVR messing up the image.

A nice low budget/high quality bit of kit there though TDM34. Sometimes it's easy to get sucked into 'upgrading' to the latest kit and it isn't always better either in my experience.

I've only recently sold an old Arcam AV9 processor (due to being drawn to the likes of having Audyssey XT32 and one box convenience of the 818). I've since ended up adding an external power amp (Arcam P7) to better drive my MK 150 series speakers. Now I'm thinking of going back to an older/high end processor since I have an EQ solution for my subs anyway and I'm finding that I prefer the sound with Audyssey OFF anyway and I wasn't that impressed with adding front height speakers to give me a 9.2 set up, so I've reverted back to 7.2 anyway.

I don't need an amp to switch HDMI either since I only have two sources and the Lumagen switches those for me anyway. I'll just have to dig out a bunch of analogue cables to connect my Oppo '93 up if I go this route.

FWIW the later Oppos (BDP105 I think is the model) can be used as a processor so you only need a power amp and use the Oppo to control the volume. It has a HDMI input for another source too, so I'm thinking I might end up going this route eventually as an alternative to having a processor/AVR.