Kniferide wrote: Thu Feb 01, 2024 10:30 am Right now I have a $20 Logitech Bluetooth receiver plugged directly into a pair of Fluid FX80's that I wasn't using. If I want to listen to records, i plug in my $15 RIAA preamp instead. I have a little line selector somewhere but I don't want to look for it. I'm getting less and less fancy with this stuff as I get older. I have 3 vintage receivers and a ton of old hifi speakers sitting around that all need something fixed in them and I just can't make myself care enough to do it anymore. Shit I'm on now sounds fine and takes up very little precious space.

I had some vintage amps and speakers I was lugging around with me for years every time I'd move. I was gonna fix them one day! That day never came. Honestly, looking back, vintage stereo equipment is outdated in the worst way. Unless you only ever listen to records or the radio, it is not worth using old gear. Having to deal with dongles and adapters just to make them work in the modern world is just a hassle at this point and you miss out on some useful features.

cakes wrote: Thu Feb 01, 2024 10:35 am

Kniferide wrote: Thu Feb 01, 2024 10:30 am Right now I have a $20 Logitech Bluetooth receiver plugged directly into a pair of Fluid FX80's that I wasn't using. If I want to listen to records, i plug in my $15 RIAA preamp instead. I have a little line selector somewhere but I don't want to look for it. I'm getting less and less fancy with this stuff as I get older. I have 3 vintage receivers and a ton of old hifi speakers sitting around that all need something fixed in them and I just can't make myself care enough to do it anymore. Shit I'm on now sounds fine and takes up very little precious space.

I had some vintage amps and speakers I was lugging around with me for years every time I'd move. I was gonna fix them one day! That day never came. Honestly, looking back, vintage stereo equipment is outdated in the worst way. Unless you only ever listen to records or the radio, it is not worth using old gear. Having to deal with dongles and adapters just to make them work in the modern world is just a hassle at this point.

The pile of half working horseshit in my basement is getting so out of control. I'm not even sure what all is down there anymore. The only thing I'm remotely interested in keeping is my Sansui 5000X, but I haven had a decent set of working passive speakers in forever so I have nothing to plug into it other than a pair of NS10t's that I definitely do not like to hear. I should just Craigslist the hole pile. Most of the time if I'm listening to music off my computer its via my studio monitors but for living room tunes, I just can't be picky about the setup, i'm doing dishes and shit, playing Yhatzee... anything is fine. Hell, I have a cheapo bluetooth speaker that floats around the house that gets as much play as anything else.

I've probably posted this before but the digital setup here is the Mac Mini with optical out to a Vincent DAC going into the Marantz. Bought everything used. Haven't changed it except to upgrade the Mini, been using it since I laboriously ripped my CD collection to lossless a decade ago. The Airport Express is there to allow AirPlay lossless streaming from phones etc. The Mini is controlled from the iOS iTunes Remote app or screen sharing via VNC as needed. Not seen: 2TB external drive to hold the music. The speakers are DIY kits, Australian maker VAF, I built in the mid 90s.
Last time I used the CD player I had to tap it on the top to unstick the tracking servo, it goes years between plays.

I've been happy with one of these I found on scratch and dent sale plus some passive speakers:
https://www.crutchfield.com/p_813PNEDGE ... 7&tp=63339

It's got BluOS https://bluos.io/ built in , which allows for all of the streaming services and internet radio you might want, and also indexes music files nicely. I think the app is very good too, One of the features that sets it apart from a similar offering from Sonos is that you can plug a usb drive directly into the machine vs having a network drive or NAS, which can be annoying if you don't enjoy solving IT problems.