Old school hi fi systems

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Originally Posted by Duffyjr
Phase Linear amp, preamp and tuner.


Remember the Phase Linear DRS-900? Wasn't it supposed to have a crazy high dynamic headroom of power bursts when needed.
 
Originally Posted by aquariuscsm
Originally Posted by Duffyjr
Phase Linear amp, preamp and tuner.


Remember the Phase Linear DRS-900? Wasn't it supposed to have a crazy high dynamic headroom of power bursts when needed.

I don't remember that exact one but Bob Carver made some pretty advanced amps at that time, mine was the Series ll 300 and that had more power than I needed. I picked up most all that equipment when I was stationed in Germany for fairly cheap. Most guys had Marantz, Techniques etc...

The guy that got me into the hifi world had a McIntosh amp that was pretty impressive, I think even over there and back then it was a couple grand.
 
Originally Posted by PimTac
Another part of the hi-fi era were the stores that sold the top brands. In the Seattle area Magnolia was one such store. You could go in and check out the latest equipment and just drool. There were other stores as well. Some had real nice listening rooms where you brought in your own music and listened to it on stuff you couldn't afford.

Then the chains came in and took over.


Wow, that is strange, never heard of Magnolia in the Northeast but I noticed the name recently (last year or so) "Magnolia" in Best Buy here in the Southeast? Did they buy the name?
I thought it was a Best Buy "name"
Best Buy here actually added a sound room and associated the Magnolia name.
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted by alarmguy
Originally Posted by PimTac
Another part of the hi-fi era were the stores that sold the top brands. In the Seattle area Magnolia was one such store. You could go in and check out the latest equipment and just drool. There were other stores as well. Some had real nice listening rooms where you brought in your own music and listened to it on stuff you couldn't afford.

Then the chains came in and took over.


Wow, that is strange, never heard of Magnolia in the Northeast but I noticed the name recently (last year or so) "Magnolia" in Best Buy here in the Southeast? Did they buy the name?
I thought it was a Best Buy "name"
Best Buy here actually added a sound room and associated the Magnolia name.




You know, I think Best Buy did buy the name or the business. Magnolia was originally a stereo store way back when. Then as the bigger chains came into play they expanded into home theater and television. They grew on that but wasn't long before they disappeared.

The mom and pop stores were already on the decline as well.
 
Phase Linear was the BOMB. Never got into the dbx thing, but for some of my friends that did and took the time and coded/decoded some of their music, it was pretty nice. At the main BX at Naval Station Guam, they had a whole section of nothing but stereo gear and a whole bunch of sale reps. That was up until about 1987 of so, they started selling box stereo's.
 
Originally Posted by Schmoe
Phase Linear was the BOMB. Never got into the dbx thing, but for some of my friends that did and took the time and coded/decoded some of their music, it was pretty nice. At the main BX at Naval Station Guam, they had a whole section of nothing but stereo gear and a whole bunch of sale reps. That was up until about 1987 of so, they started selling box stereo's.

Yes the dbx was the best thing to happen to cassettes, I even had an Alpine in my truck with dbx decoder. The one I had also had the Dynamic Range Enhancer which worked really well on store bought cassettes and some albums that were lacking depth. Man this is making me want to dig all this out and set it up.
 
[Linked Image]
 
So I started building my system. But it's not going to be old school from the looks of it. Got a 7:1 Onkyo receiver and hooked up 5 of my 5:1 kenwood speakers as I ran out of wires to connect the subwoofer. I guess the homage to vintage will be to add a turntable, tape deck and a CD player. But first I need to add a Bluetooth adapter because the only things I listen to are streaming feeds on TuneIn.

I'll maybe add a equalizer with nice color bars for a retro look.
 
Originally Posted by Alfred_B
So I started building my system. But it's not going to be old school from the looks of it. Got a 7:1 Onkyo receiver and hooked up 5 of my 5:1 kenwood speakers as I ran out of wires to connect the subwoofer. I guess the homage to vintage will be to add a turntable, tape deck and a CD player. But first I need to add a Bluetooth adapter because the only things I listen to are streaming feeds on TuneIn.

I'll maybe add a equalizer with nice color bars for a retro look.

Your Onkyo should of come with some sort of acoustic optimizer, looks like they call it AccuEQ. In most home theaters that the normal guy sets up rarely can you get perfect speaker placement, even in my man cave in my basement the side surrounds are not in optimal places, one side is closer to the listening area than the other one while the two rears are fairly close but one is shifted to the right of where is should be. In the front one of the main speakers is in a corner while the other one is more in the open and has more furniture around it. All these things can effect timing and volume. My Yamaha 7.1 comes with a acoustic optimizer you place in the listening area and run it and it adjusts the timing and volume, you can really tell the difference. My first 5.1 receiver I used a Radio Shack sound level meter to do this but it would only adjust the sound volume and took hours.
 
Originally Posted by Alfred_B
Got a 7:1 Onkyo receiver

Which model is it? If it's not too old, it may have some built in internet connectivity for audio streaming.

If not, I would try to find a used Chromecast Audio device that can stream directly. It lets you avoid inferior bluetooth streaming quality and does not tie up your phone/tablet once the stream has started playing. You can use optical input on your receiver to connect Chromecast Audio.


[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]
 
I am bidding on a couple of Marantz receivers 2230b and 2220b - unbelievable how expensive they are
 
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