Old VS. New Integrated Amp shootout

ha, most of these debates go round and round with no end in sight...doesnt bother me, i like it....

like a poster said before, this phono stage in the 8005 wasn't the biggest thing on their list...This amp seems to be more digital leaning...Which isn't a bad thing, just isn't useful to me...

test continues...

IMHO i think variable loudness is a feature they should've kept, especially for low listening...

 

Interesting that you say that about the Scott. I was prepared to buy a Scott Lk-74 today but they guy coulnt meet while I was traveling through his area.

I've got a Fisher 400 with a nice Ratheon 12ax7 and my Musical Fidelity M1 is much better. I have a Fisher KX-200 and the phono sounds just about identical to the 400. I have a VLT 2.5 phono connected to that and it is may main system. With efficient speakers, I would put that combination up against any I've ever heard. That includes a Balanced Audio Technologies VK-30 I have that has an excellent internal phono. With the Sansui 9090 I have a Parks Audio Puffin and it absolutely blows away the internal.

A couple weeks ago I took my puffin over to a friend that is running a Pioneer SX 650, he said his albums were sounding flat and dull. He light up like a roman candle when I showed him what a new external could do for his analog chain. It was the standard "take the blanket off the speakers" experience.

I can't prove anything any more than I can prove that clean records sound better than dirty ones, some people have their preferences and they cannot be proven wrong. So I will say in my experience, older (and most new) internal phonos are limited in what design they can implement due to a lack of space in the chassis. Having it's own dedicated power supply seems to be an advantage as well as having a clean and separate circuit from the rest of the receiver. I'm not a super technical guy but as far as I can tell, technology in all pre amps has moved forward in the last 40 years. With perhaps the exception of the Mc that Tide mentioned and a couple others, a vintage pre amp doesn't sound better than modern. With amps that's not the case, technology and design hasn't moved that much and if anything the parts being used are cheaper. Most notable, the transformers are not what they once were. I would guess the the physical weight of the two units the OP is comparing is much different and that is the reason why.

 

Hard to sit through this guy's narration, but interesting comparison:

 

That was an interesting comparison and I have never heard anyone pronounce Yamaha like that.

It is somewhat less surprising that Yamaha sounds so similar to their old stuff, they are largely the same company. They may very well have employees that have been working for them since 78, or at least the last 30 years. Marantz has been owned by many different companies and operated as a managed brand. If you were to open the cast of the two Marantz discussed in this thread, they would look much less similar than the yammies did.

Extra points to the OP if he opens the cases and post some pics.

 

I'm going to throw Dynaco phono stages into that mix. I've been using a Dynaco SCA-50 as my phono stage for years, I even preferred it to the stage in the Spectral pre I used to have

 

They don't look terribly similar to me, but you may be right about them having tenured employees in many areas.





They produced a video of the engineers voicing the 1100 - they don't look like they've been there 30+ years, however the core design principles may be the same.



My guess is this Marantz shootout will end up a wash, with each having different strengths.

 

Yes, similar design principles, much like McIntosh. Marantz, from the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's and now are not all that similar. I think those two are actually very similar, the layout is different, heat sinks and transformer have moved but it a very full and I would imagine heavy chassis.

 

I used to have that TV.

 

I am fairly certain the vintage will have the better phono section. Vinyl was king then. Nowadays, vinyl is a bit player and inserting phono section in a low or moderately priced receiver is just a feature where cost is minimized.

The better contest between these two would be thru line level inputs.

 

i agree, kind of, the 8005 isn't exactly cheap...

thanks for the pics by the way, i was literally going to do that this afternoon...

swapping back to the 1152 sometime today...

 

That's where the moderately priced comes in.

 

So, switched back to the 1152 and it didn't take too long to realize in this room, with my set up, the phono section sounds much better...

The 8005 was lacking in the bass department, by quite a margin...

All things being equal if this was a cd/digital set up it probably wouldn't be a contest... But like was said before in the mid 70's vinyl was king and its a no brainer 1/2 way into Walking on the Moon by the Police...

I apologize if this seems anticlimactic but vinyl is also king here...

 

I used to have a lot of old vintage audio gear.........

 

The old one PULVERIZES the 8005.

 

Vintage for vinyl, modern for digital