Receiver suggestions - Vintage Receivers with more attack*

Hello everyone. Just joined. Planning my entry level setup for vinyl. I have my eye on Rega Planar 3. But for receiver I decided to go vintage. Since I'm listening everything from classic jazz to hard rock and electronic music, so for receiver I'm thinking something like Pioneer SX 850. I never had vintage gear before, so could you guys suggest receivers with more attack. I was originally thinking about Marantz series, but those are with more lean back character and more suitable for jazz listeners. I need something in between

 

Vintage gear can be problematic and the investment required to get units restored places them near the price of new or nearly new equipment. Most vintage receivers will be noisier than new ones. Receivers in general are noisier and often less well built than their counterpart integrated amplifiers. They have more features often, of course radio tuner, but many features come at the expense of sound quality. You should look into the Rega Elex-R to match the Planar 3. It sounds great and has very nice build quality.
-Bill

 

We need more info.

What's your budget? What speakers do you have? How loud do you listen to music? What current gear do you have and what do you like/dislike about it?

The answers to these questions will help us to point you in the right direction.

 

The post above makes a large different of your requirements- what speakers, loudness, etc. Also budget is everything.

For dependable SS I like early all discrete Yamaha CR 10xx series that are available from 15 watts to 70 watts per channel. These early Yamahas do not have the early op-amps that do not sound that great. If I am not mistaken, all the 20xx series have op-amps.

However, tube type amplifiers & receivers are superior in everyway to my ears. The fore-mentioned SS Yamaha CR series does not need a power supply/capacitor rebuilt yet. All tube gear should have a rebuilt power supply and new coupling capacitors for far superior sound. A stock tube Fisher 400/500/800 does not sound any better than the Yamaha CR series to my ears. The Yamaha is ultra clear with a little midrange (voices) being recessed whereas the Fishers have a little grungy sound, but with open & extended midrange. Upgraded Fishers blow the Yamaha CR series way sonically.

So, it is about having a satisfying system for many years vs a system you would likely upgrade later.

 

Pioneer XX50 series are quite well regarded when working to spec but being older equipment, chances are likely it'll need some level of service before that will happen. If you do not have the technical abilities to tend to its needs, you'll either have to find someone who does or you should strictly limit yourself to units that have been completely reconditioned. Vintage equipment will therefore will probably cost more in the long run than comparable modern equipment. And even after being reconditioned, there are no guarantees something else will not fail at any future point.

Whether owning vintage is worth the added expense and care that it will entail, is a decision you must ponder carefully.

 

How often do you really listen to FM at home?
You might consider an integrated amp instead.

 

The SX-850 is an excellent choice, in fact it's what I purchased five years ago when I jumped back into this insanity. As a teen my dad had bought me one of the lowere end SCX series back around 1976, so I had a strong current of nostalgic longing for a Pioneer. After researching the SX series I took the advice off of one site that the SX-850 offered the most for the money, and that I really didn't need the monster power of the models up the chain. I currently use it in my bedroom system with a CD player and DAC. If you can get one shipped for under $300 you've done well, just be sure it's fully functional.

Another good place to start is with the Luxman R series of receivers (R-1030, R-1040, R-1050, etc). After my Pioneer I moved on to a Luxman L-85v integrated amp which has really great sound after seriously considering the R series receivers. However I realized I really didn't need the tuner so why bother? Other will chime in on Marantz and Sansui, also great choices, I just don't have personal experience with them.

For a solid contemporary receiver perhaps check out this new listing in the classifieds for a Marantz PM 8004, looks like a nice deal:
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/marantz-pm-8004.732679/

Good luck to you, and welcome to the Forum, you're gonna love it!

 

BTW- 20XX series may be limited to op-amps in the FM tuner, but I still like all discrete

As mentioned above, a NAD 326bee is likely better sounding than vintage and newer not needing any service. $300-350 used. Get a separate FM tuner.

 

^ Good call on the NAD. Has nice pre-amp out that can be used with a separate amp downstream.

 

I picked up a minty Marantz 2230 for $250 shipped. It sounds f'ing amazing on jazz, 70's songwriters, rock, you name it. No glare. The wife and her friends recently pushed it hard on some dance music and it went loud and deep. They knew what they were doing back in the day. But as @KT88 pointed out, vintage can be tricky, but when you get it right, it's oh so good.

 

While that is a smart practical point, integrateds don't glow or have the groovy Gyro-touch wheel

 

That is a good deal.

 

But vintage doesn't give you remote control.

 

Thanks everybody for suggestions. I had some rethinks about receivers, since I'm planning to listen only vinyl and cd, the integrated amp would be better decision. And I don't want to risk with vintage anymore Now considering Onkyo A-9050 or Marantz PM series. How's PM series, still more suitable for jazz only ?

 

I would reconsider the NAD 326bee. It is a serious and inexpensive amplifier.

 

Onkyo A-9050 Review
The thin sound makes the A-9050 feel a touch anaemic compared with the more robust A-9030. Its soundstage also seems modest when put next to the likes of the Rotel RA-10 and Marantz PM6004. With a lack of weight to the overall sound, there’s a shortage of punch and richness that doesn’t fully engage the listener in the way that made the A-9030 so appealing to listen to.

This aspect is most revealing when playing a turntable using the phono input – spin Dusty Springfield’s Spooky, and the sound is much less involving than some rival amplifiers, robbing songs of the usual mellow and warm glow we tend to associate with vinyl records.

That said, while the Onkyo is not the smoothest and easiest listen, it’s not without its merits. The A-9050 is fairly well-balanced across the frequencies and has a decent helping of detail on board that makes you keep on listening.

It may not have the layers of insight and composure that we'd really like, but its clean and assured sound and good grasp of timing does make it rather listenable.

Note- Marantz PM6004 is a better amplifier.

 

NAD C326BEE Review
The C326BEE could only be a NAD product. The traditional grey finish may have modulated from ‘battleship' to something a little more discreet, but few other manufacturers have the confidence/bloody-mindedness to evolve the looks of its electronics at such a glacial pace.

Where specification is concerned, though, NAD is happy to keep up with the times.

The C326BEE may be one of the few amplifiers in circulation with binding for just a single pair of loudspeakers, but it hits back with a fascia-positioned 3.5mm input as one of seven line-level connections, two of which are tape loops, and not one but two subwoofer pre-outs in case you find the sound a bit tentative in the lower reaches. We don't think you will, though.

Low frequencies impress In fact, it's the low frequencies that immediately impress. Playing Joy Division's She's Lost Control, the NAD generates solid weight and presence at the bottom end – in fact, this trait informs the C326BEE's entire sound, which is much more a boxer's heavy bag than his speed-ball.

It has undoubted expertise in other areas – timing, in particular, is toe-tappingly expressive, there's fulminating dynamic potency on offer and it's especially revealing when given a well-recorded voice, with its fluid, organic midrange – but it's the scale and solidity of its bass reproduction that's the initial calling card.





You're never unaware of what else the C326BEE has to offer, though – where agility is concerned, for example, the this amp's giving nothing away, and it's happy to adapt to pretty much any genre of music you might throw at it – massed choral works, for example, are particularly revealing, allowing the NAD to demonstrate its punch and articulacy simultaneously.

In short, this amplifier remains as likeable and listenable as when we last formally tested it in May 2009. And yet it's lost a star in the interim.

 

Absolute Sound Review NAD 326BEE- Absolute Sound
The BEE of NAD’s BEE series of components pays homage to its designer Bjorn Erik Edvardsen, who also designed the storied 3020 integrated amplifier that put the company on the map three decades ago. Introduced only a few years after Crown and Bob Carver at Phase Linear had begun to pioneer really high?powered amplifiers, the 3020 was rated at a mere 20 watts per channel. By no means wholly accurate or neutral in tonal balance and far from the last word in transparency or transient attack, it nevertheless had an engaging personality: sweet on top, warm in the midrange, plummy on the bottom, easy on the ear because always musical and surprisingly dynamic owing to some ingenious electronic circuitry that continues in the new model (see sidebar).

As solid a performer as the 3020 was, I’ve always felt its popularity—with some 1.4 million units in the field world?wide, NAD claim it’s the highest selling amplifier in audio history—owed to a combination of low price (introduced at less than $200, it topped out, I believe, at $219 in the early eighties), a brilliant marketing strategy, and a key—at the time unique—design feature that had nothing to do with sonics as such. The 3020 was initially sold almost exclusively through genuine high?end or otherwise “quality” dealers, so it quickly acquired an audiophile reputation as the integrated amp of choice for those strapped for cash and wanting to put their money where it counted most, in record?playing setups and speaker systems. What cinched the deal was that Evardsen had the uncommon good sense to make the preamp?out/power?amp in jacks accessible on the back panel, connected by removable jumper jacks.1 It thus became possible to use an integrated amp to bootstrap your way toward later electronics purchases, which is exactly what I did when, as an impecunious professor of literature just starting out in Los Angeles in the late seventies, I traded my DCM Time Windows for the murderously inefficient Acoustat 2 electrostatics. The preamp section of my 3020 was fed into a kit?built Hafler DH200. When I eventually acquired a better preamp, the 3020 was pressed into integrated use again as the nucleus of my office system.

NAD has come a long way since then, branching out into separates, a prestige line of components, compact disc and DVD players, and home theater. Yet it has never abandoned its core commitment to value?driven products that offer a combination of excellent performance and sensible pricing. Under review here are the C326 integrated amplifier and C545 CD player, priced at $499 each. It took only a few moments of listening to be reminded that a lot has changed in the past thirty years when it comes to amplification, all of it for the better. Banished is the 3020’s warm, somewhat veiled personality, mandated back then by the limitations of solid?state technology at low price?points, in its place a thoroughly neutral tonal?balance, a considerably more transparent window onto the presentation, and far more control and authority.

Richard Goode’s Beethoven sonatas left me in stunned disbelief by how much 50 really intelligently designed watts per channel could bring my low-sensitivity Quad 2805s to life. Goode’s Waldstein, without in any way sacrificing nuance and delicacy, is a powerhouse performance, nowhere more so than in the thundering coda to the last movement, which filled the room to a nearly lifelike level. Extraordinary dynamic range from seemingly limited power has always been a specialty chez NAD, and the C326 continues to uphold a proud tradition.

During the review period my wife and I attended Siegfried at the LA Opera. The next day I couldn’t resist comparing the disappointing forging song we heard there with the Solti recording. Even after forty years John Culshaw’s production remains a sonic milestone. He went through the trouble of procuring the tuned anvils that Wagner specified, Horst Berger, the Vienna Philharmonic’s chief percussionist, doing the pounding so that Wolfgang Windgassen could give all his energy to the singing. Consider everything that’s going on here: a full Wagnerian—that is, augmented—orchestra, a percussionist hitting anvils with a sledgehammer, a heldentenor singing at the top of his lungs as he forges a weapon from the shattered remnants of his grandfather’s spear, a hysterical scheming dwarf running about, the whole thing staged for the gramophone, which, this being a Culshaw production, means filling up every corner of the soundstage (Siegfried is placed back and center). No matter what was asked of it, this little amplifier delivered the goods at levels as loud as I could stand. I won’t claim it was the last word in ultimate control and composure, but nothing ever fell apart, my attention was never diverted from the drama, and the soundstaging was superb. Most of the time, even over very good equipment, the sound of the anvil will momentarily overwhelm the orchestral chords, but the NAD held fast, the low brass that provide the foundation clearly audible.

Confronted with a relatively low?powered amplifier, one’s first inclination is always to test its mettle with the big stuff. But in fact I began by hooking it up to my original Quad ESL?57s (Wayne Piquet restored) and playing some early Peter, Paul, and Mary, Mary Travers having just passed away. There was a time in my youth when I thought hers the most beautiful voice I had ever heard: The C326/57 combination recalled that sentiment and took me back to that time. As for resolution and detail, I don’t know of many more demanding tests than the whispered directions Bernstein gives to the orchestra in his magnificent recording of the Op. 131 with the Vienna Philharmonic. Whether on old or new Quads, the NAD revealed them all.

Is it a perfect amplifier? Of course not. In ultimate terms, depth seems to me a little foreshortened; and though it is in the main very neutral—much more so than any of several far more expensive units I can think of—there is a slight dark cast overall, a tilting toward the Yin. This doesn’t concern me much—truth to tell, it’s even rather attractive (and some would argue more accurate to reality)—but if your system leans in that direction, an audition might be prudent. Otherwise, no reservations whatsoever.

If I seem to be slighting the CD player, I guess I am because…well, let me put it this way: if the C326 cost four times its $500 retail, my assessment of its value would remain pretty much the same. By contrast, the C545 is “merely” a very good $500 CD player: solid, pleasing, nonfatiguing, its personality on the polite, even cautious side, never dreaming of making an unpleasant sound. The flip side of this is that it doesn’t quite fully excite, engage, or enliven either. The Waldstein and Siegfried’s forging song again: When I ran the output through the Benchmark DAC1, the dynamic envelope of the sonata’s coda seemed to explode with a sheerly physical power that is simply lacking with the C545 alone. In the forging song, the bass foundation, so vital to the texture and sound picture of the Ring at this point, was deeper, weightier, and more involving, the whole soundstage of greater apparent volume, dimensionality, and especially bottom-end air. Nor do the big anvil strikes momentarily cover the deep brass instruments.

The C545 is certainly good enough to warrant consideration, and the price calls for no complaints. But know that the C326 will readily reveal the improvement of something more expensive or, better still, the Benchmark either on an initial purchase or down the road.2 With this new integrated amplifier, NAD proves again that lighting can indeed strike twice: In view of the superb performance, its low price feels like a gift.

[1] I can’t say for certain that NAD was the first company to do this, but it was the first I am aware of.

[2] Perhaps needless to say, in the recent flurry of disagreement over the Benchmark between Robert Greene and Alan Taffel, I am firmly in Dr. Greene’s camp: I’ll put my DAC1 up against any DAC on the planet.

<h5>Specs & Pricing</h5>

C326BEE integrated amplifier

Output power: >50Wpc, 20–20kHz, 0.009%THD into 4 or 8ohms
Inputs:
Dimensions: 17?1/8" x 4" 14?1/4"
Weight: 15.2 lbs.
Price: $499

C545BEE compact disc player

Frequency response: 5Hz?20kHz +/-0.5 dB
Dimensions: 17-1/8” x 2-3/4” x 11-1/4”
Weight: 10 lbs.
Price: $499

NAD Electronics International

Pickering, Ontario, Canada
(905) 831-6555
www.nadelectronics.com
lute Sound Review NAD C326BEE

 

Me and my friend listened for quite a while to a Rogue Sphinx driving Wharfedale Reva 4s and Dali Zensors at Audio Element in Pasadena. We liked it...but how an amp sounds depends on the speakers it is driving. I've always liked Denon for years and years, though they are more an AVR company.

On a different note, don't be afraid to buy several-year-old models used (not like 10 years old, that might be asking for problems). Used prices can be really great. I scored a 2x100 watt Onkyo stereo receiver, not too old, $30!!! Gave it to a buddy for Hannukah since his old receiver was intermittently noisy. Sounded significantly and obviously better than his old receiver.

 

Semi-Vintage does, however.

the 1990 TOTL 130w/ch.RMS PIONEER VSX-D1S is a terrific-sounding, reliable workhorse;

 

I got the v.3 version of this used in 2016 for $200 + $50 S&H. It kicked a$$! I had to spend 6 times the amount (used also) before I was satisfied wit an upgrade.

Performance

 

And that is how you get your daily exercise (at least at my age).........