twelvepoint wrote: Wed Nov 17, 2021 1:52 pm

motorbike guy wrote: Wed Nov 17, 2021 11:51 am

twelvepoint wrote: Wed Nov 17, 2021 9:22 am

Is there something out there that's otherwise a traditional integrated amp but has some modern amenities like optical input , maybe bluetooth) and at its heart is a traditional, dynamic transistor path that we know and love? Is such a thing a unicorn?

Integrated amps with DACs and Streamers built in are the hot shit right now.

NAD has a whole line of integrated amps that have built in DACs and bluetooth.
There are a ton of these things in the higher price brackets. Naim, Hegel, etc. have $5000 amps that are supposed to be great. For $1500 or less I would look at the Cambridge, Rotel, Arcam ,Audiolab and, yes, the Yamaha and Technics ones. The Leak integrated also looks really cool and retro, if that is your thing.

Thanks!

Really, the more like a 70s amp the better: class a/b transistor amp with phono preamp and mechanical controls at the front are perfect. I have one of those little class d bluetooth NAD amps for my office and it works, but the controls are poorly designed and the sound is not too exciting, so I'm thinking keep it simple. Like, some old Marantz would be perfect, but having a remote and optical input are important.

Also, a >$1000 price tag becomes a price point where some, err, negotiation will be required!

These https://www.psaudio.com/product-category/sprout/ are $800 and are well reviewed on hifi sites. It seems to offer everything you're looking for.

lotharsandwich wrote: Wed Nov 17, 2021 5:33 pm

twelvepoint wrote: Wed Nov 17, 2021 1:52 pm

motorbike guy wrote: Wed Nov 17, 2021 11:51 am

Integrated amps with DACs and Streamers built in are the hot shit right now.

NAD has a whole line of integrated amps that have built in DACs and bluetooth.
There are a ton of these things in the higher price brackets. Naim, Hegel, etc. have $5000 amps that are supposed to be great. For $1500 or less I would look at the Cambridge, Rotel, Arcam ,Audiolab and, yes, the Yamaha and Technics ones. The Leak integrated also looks really cool and retro, if that is your thing.

Thanks!

Really, the more like a 70s amp the better: class a/b transistor amp with phono preamp and mechanical controls at the front are perfect. I have one of those little class d bluetooth NAD amps for my office and it works, but the controls are poorly designed and the sound is not too exciting, so I'm thinking keep it simple. Like, some old Marantz would be perfect, but having a remote and optical input are important.

Also, a >$1000 price tag becomes a price point where some, err, negotiation will be required!

These https://www.psaudio.com/product-category/sprout/ are $800 and are well reviewed on hifi sites. It seems to offer everything you're looking for.

PS Audio makes good stuff, but they change products very often and stop supporting repairs; they'd rather have you upgrade. I recently had an issue (left channel was weak) with my Trio C100 Integrated and they would not support it. I ended up finding a guy here in SoCal who used to do modifications/upgrades on them and he walked me through how to buy replacement ICEpower amplifier modules and replace them myself. Good as new.

I have heard nothing but good things about the Sprout, though.

jason from volo wrote: Wed Nov 17, 2021 12:59 pm Potentially stupid question w/ obvious answer:

Are there any advantages to having a simple setup such as turntable -> preamp -> powered speakers?

(Other than reducing number of components to a minimum and potentially being the most compact?)

(Any sonic advantages?)

my opinion is that there can be advantages, but it has to do with the details.

First, it depends on what is going on inside the powered speakers. Is it just a mono amp in the speaker box driving the woofer and tweeter through a passive crossover that also happens to be in the box? Advantage as compared to an externally housed amp, is fewer boxes, and the good chance that the amp is sufficient to drive the speakers tor reasonable volume without shutting down. To the extent power amps can have a specific sound, presumably the amps were chosen by the designer to compliment the crossover and drivers. Mono passive biamping is what it is, and you do get the advantage of two mono amps with two separate power supplies. Disadvantages are you cannot upgrade the speakers and the amp separately, difficult serviceability, compromises to amp design to fit inside a speaker box, compromises to speaker design to fit an amp. I can't see much in it net net - since a good stereo power amp (or two good mono amps) housed in separate boxes from the crossover seems like the best combination of flexibility and sound quality. And yeah, fewer boxes if that is important to you. its not terribly important to me.

If, on the other hand, the powered speakers are using an active crossover and separate amplifiers for each driver then you get the further advantage of more amps working less hard, and an active crossover which is generally better than a passive crossover. Custom tailored, etc. etc. Downsides as above, plus your cool active crossover shares a power supply with 2 or 3 power amps. Not ideal but probably still better net net.

I love active systems, and I think, all else being equal, they sound better for several reasons.
1) more amps means each amp is less stressed and has more headroom for natural sounding dynamics and less distortion.
2) an active crossover is dealing with a line level signal, but has its own power supply so it is an active circuit, not just ramming a speaker level signal through big chokes, resistors and capacitors. there are other reasons to prefer active crossovers which I don't fully grasp, but in my experience they sound better.
3) active crossovers allow for some adjustment to compensate for taste, room issues, etc. sort of like much fancier and lower noise tone controls or eq.

There are some different implementations of active systems - for instance, Linn and Burchardt (and some others) sell a system that consists of a digital hub/preamp that digitizes everything (that is not already digital) then sends it to the speakers (sometimes wirelessly) where it is converted back to analog and amplified through dedicated in-speaker amps, usually one amp per driver. so it is basically a digital active crossover. This allows more fine eq adjustment, and coupled with a microphone and software, the ability to automatically tune the system ("calibrate") to fit the specific room it is in. The analog purist in me shudders, but digital is so good these days that ultimate resolution and fidelity apparently does not suffer, according to reviewers I respect. I have not heard a system like this but I would love to. Still, the drawbacks are as above - with amps inside the speakers, you can't really upgrade them, if something dies, it is harder to fix or replace. Compromises to fit the amp inside the speaker box, and vice versa.

Contrast this with a regular old analog active system (like I have) where you have an analog domain crossover between your preamp and several power amps (usually one for each driver, again). No software room correction is really possible and you have lots more boxes and cables to deal with. Still better than passive speakers, all else being equal, but expensive and complicated. I find myself falling down the Naim rabbit hole and looking at outboard power supplies for everything. Right now, for me, the ultimate solution.

so, blathering aside - it depends on what your powered or active speakers are actually doing.

Ok I pulled the trigger in the Yamaha A-S701. It's class AB, 100wpc, includes bass, treble, variable presence, phono preamp, optical in, remote control and no other bullshit. The guts look like straight out of the 80s with as big transformer and transistors on heat sinks, multiple daughter boards and through hole components. 800 bucks, and unless I had better speakers, a dedicated listening area, and the hearing acuity I had 30 years ago is all I really should be spending. Could have saved $250 and got the 80wpc version but I'm a damn hell ass king here.

enframed wrote: Wed Nov 17, 2021 11:57 pm

lotharsandwich wrote: Wed Nov 17, 2021 5:33 pm

twelvepoint wrote: Wed Nov 17, 2021 1:52 pm
Thanks!

Really, the more like a 70s amp the better: class a/b transistor amp with phono preamp and mechanical controls at the front are perfect. I have one of those little class d bluetooth NAD amps for my office and it works, but the controls are poorly designed and the sound is not too exciting, so I'm thinking keep it simple. Like, some old Marantz would be perfect, but having a remote and optical input are important.

Also, a >$1000 price tag becomes a price point where some, err, negotiation will be required!

These https://www.psaudio.com/product-category/sprout/ are $800 and are well reviewed on hifi sites. It seems to offer everything you're looking for.

PS Audio makes good stuff, but they change products very often and stop supporting repairs; they'd rather have you upgrade. I recently had an issue (left channel was weak) with my Trio C100 Integrated and they would not support it. I ended up finding a guy here in SoCal who used to do modifications/upgrades on them and he walked me through how to buy replacement ICEpower amplifier modules and replace them myself. Good as new.

I have heard nothing but good things about the Sprout, though.

Not supporting repairs drives me crazy. We have an older Sonos Play 5 box which always sounded good for what it was and made things easy in a house with small children , but something went wrong with the amplifier and their only solution was to offer a discount on a newer model. I'm not eager to buy more Sonos products after that experience.

twelvepoint wrote: Thu Nov 18, 2021 10:49 am Ok I pulled the trigger in the Yamaha A-S701. It's class AB, 100wpc, includes bass, treble, variable presence, phono preamp, optical in, remote control and no other bullshit. The guts look like straight out of the 80s with as big transformer and transistors on heat sinks, multiple daughter boards and through hole components. 800 bucks, and unless I had better speakers, a dedicated listening area, and the hearing acuity I had 30 years ago is all I really should be spending. Could have saved $250 and got the 80wpc version but I'm a damn hell ass king here.

100W fuck yeah!
let us know how it sounds.

motorbike guy wrote: Thu Nov 18, 2021 12:48 pm

twelvepoint wrote: Thu Nov 18, 2021 10:49 am Ok I pulled the trigger in the Yamaha A-S701. It's class AB, 100wpc, includes bass, treble, variable presence, phono preamp, optical in, remote control and no other bullshit. The guts look like straight out of the 80s with as big transformer and transistors on heat sinks, multiple daughter boards and through hole components. 800 bucks, and unless I had better speakers, a dedicated listening area, and the hearing acuity I had 30 years ago is all I really should be spending. Could have saved $250 and got the 80wpc version but I'm a damn hell ass king here.

100W fuck yeah!
let us know how it sounds.

Will do! It's gotta be more interesting than the $250 amp-on-a-chip HDMI receiver I have now.

The best part is now you are free to muck about with the thousands of cool weird used speakers wandering around the internet looking for homes. Try some expensive BBC derived standmounts, Try some 70s style 3 way sealed boxes, try some tall skinny towers, try some flat panels. Your amp can handle it all. Of course a good amp is gong to show up deficiencies in your source, but you knew that already. The upside is that source upgrades hit twice as hard now. So its all good.

motorbike guy wrote: Fri Nov 19, 2021 7:36 am The best part is now you are free to muck about with the thousands of cool weird used speakers wandering around the internet looking for homes. Try some expensive BBC derived standmounts, Try some 70s style 3 way sealed boxes, try some tall skinny towers, try some flat panels. Your amp can handle it all. Of course a good amp is gong to show up deficiencies in your source, but you knew that already. The upside is that source upgrades hit twice as hard now. So its all good.

My nice speakers are some small B&Ws, model CDM1-SE, but I use them at my desk and for recording. I had a pair of Heresy IIs but they don't really fit well in the living room of our new place, which is too bad because they sounded great (I used to power them with a Crown DC300a). So the "skinny tower" might be the way to go.

I could possibly do bookshelf speakers as a 2nd set. Width and height could be whatever, but depth is 12" max.

Any reccos? I'll keep an eye out. Mass North Shore is flooded with upper middle class boomers getting rid of 80s hi-fi crap.

A while back I picked up another LP12. It isn't the first run, but it is pretty close and the only upgrade that I can find to it was someone put on a Fidelity Research tonearm. A co-worker of mine is a wizard and swapped out the bearing and retuned or swapped out the suspension springs. I think the next step is going to be picking up a Lingo IV power supply / speed controller and a new tonearm. Anyone here have experience with the Ittok tonearm? I know my way around most of the more "normal" hifi turntables but Linn has always kind of felt "adjacent" to the normal hifi world as they tend to do things in their own idiosyncratic way.