Why I spend more time listening to vintage radios than hi-fi sistem

I am a music teacher, conductor and opera singer, and I consider myself as very critical listener.
Few years ago I bought transistor radio Grunding Ocean boy 210, mostly for the looks of it. I was immediately impressed by the sound and so were my friends. Then I decided to get more similar radios (2-way mono speaker, din input), to start collecting them, and to search for best sounding one.
Amongst others I got Grundig Satellite 2000. That radio sounds like band in the box! Instruments are well separated, bass dry and not boomy, have to eq it a bit to get it right but...You can listen to it on low volume and still hear everything. On loud volumes it gets even more interesting - sound becomes bigger than it should, vocals get more presence and most interesting...It makes you dance! As it can run on batteries for days I bring these radios to picnics and smaller parties and it strangely always makes people dance. You crank it up loud and you can still talk to each other.
I don't get all that from my stereo setup.

So, now I ask you, can these characteristics be considered audiophile? If so, I think maybe hifi went wrong way in bringing reality and not much musicality.

 

Well, from my experience FM radio with a high end tuner on the best stereo system does not sound good enough for me. Any record, CD, streaming service etc, will sound significantly better. So, I cannot imagine a portable radio would make FM radio sound even better. I am not buying your premise. The better my stereo system gets, the more musical it becomes.

 

Sorry, forgot to mention I run chromecast audio or any other source thru din input.

 

I was broke back in the early 70s and for music bought a Grundig 305 on sale for $40 at a nearby large department store.
That sucker put out great tone and was loud enough to use for parties.
Laid it across the top of a kitchen drawer to give it a larger cabinet and more bass and still remember everybody dancing to Stevie Wonder "Boogie On Reggae Woman."
Drilled a hole in the side for a phone jack and plugged my Telecaster into it and it made a groovy sounding guitar amp too!
One party everybody got naked and I had two pretty girls fall asleep on my lap after they passed out from the tequila.
Good times!
I miss that radio!

 

Ya, naked girls and tequila - I'm all over THAT!!

 

If the Grundig is what gives you the most enjoyment, that is what you should be listening to.

 

I do. Just trying to figure it out what is the catch. I belive it has something to do with mono sound being more close to what would real instrument or voice sound like in a room. And sound does not reflect so much. I guess, all in all, it's more an effect than sound quality.

 

Perhaps your system could use some fine tuning, upgrading etc or simply find the portable radio better suited to your ears overall.

 

My Grundig had natural "compression" and tight bass punch.
Voices and midrange were excellent.
Mono creates a sound wave with no cancellation from another speaker nearby.
Thus mono is great for covering a room with less frequency aberrations.
I kid you not---it was a pocket "hifi."
Fun is to be had from a hot little portable, no doubt.
I bought the newest version of the same radio recently.
Unfortunately it has not made young naked girls reappear which was a major disappointment.

 

I'm sorry but there is only so much a small radio is going to be able to do but it can provide music - which for many listeners is more than enough.

I've noticed, or at least it seems, that few professional musicians are not overly concerned about sound quality the way many "audiophiles" are which makes perfect sense.

 

I would give it until the beginning of beach season, at least, before passing judgement.

 

It strikes me that what you're describing is the kind of thing the Bose marketing team come up with when they're hyping up their WaveRadios and SoundDocks and suchlike....

 

Ya, as a matter of fact, I've noticed the more someone is obsessed with "great sound" the less likely they are to actually play an instrument.

 

A few FM tuners on the right FM station sounds very good to me. The TT is better, but my FM reception is acceptable. Few FM tuners will perform well, but a few upgraded tube type FM tuners are good. I use an upgraded SS Scott LT-112B with better audio coupling capacitors and it is more dynamic than tube type tuners and has better bass. No other SS tuner I heard are as good as an upgraded Scott LT-112B.

 

If asking any tube enthusiast, it's the tubes (or early transistor) the single ended design. The low power of single ended "class A" Grundig will be at about 2.5 watts, and connected to an efficient full range speaker. The semi-open back design "unboxes" the sound of the speaker. Right off, there is no crossover that causes coloration, so the midrange sounds open and very natural. the I own two Grundig radios, and their sound is remarkable. Frequency range extends to about 12kHz, without the help of the electrostatic tweeters that some radios have. Overall, the freq resp will be apprx 55Hz to 12kHz for the typical table radio. (metric equivalent of a 6x9 inch speaker) The harmonic distortion levels are relatively high. I don't have a spec off hand, but it is audible. So, despite the drawbacks of the THD, and low power, the Grundig radios play loud and sound very pleasant, definitely hifi by 50's standards.

In some regards, a healthy Grundig may sound more musical vs a budget stereo rig.. with multi-way speakers. I do believe however, if the radio sounds "better" than an audiophile rig, something is seriously wrong with the equipment!

 

I suspect the Grundig radio has a single speaker. If so, that's another reason why it sounds so good to the OP. A single speaker may not go as deep in the bass or as high in the treble but it usually has a more coherent sound than the typical multi-way speaker system.

 

That story and it's the RADIO that you miss? you have confirmed your audiophile credentials, sir.

 

There were plenty of awful sounding table radios back in 1975.
My Grundig 305 kicked their butts.
Kicks the butt of my several Bose clock radios also.
The Bose sounds tubby and fake.
The famous "tone" that Grundig had a lock on was magic in the midrange and tight in the bass.
Quite an accomplishment for $40.
My big "grown up" modern stereo is of course from an entirely different planet.
But I designed it to have magic in the midrange which was the lesson learned from Grundig.

 

When I was speaker shopping, I went to Best Buy. I was comparing some Elac's and some B&O bookshelfs. When he first switched to the Elacs, The music was coming from the FM Tuner and my first impression was how horrible the Elac's sounded. Then when he switched to the B&O's, he also changed to a digital source and it sounded so much better. My first thought was how horrible the Elac's were, but when he switched back to them with the same digital source, they sounded good. It wasn't some sort of revelation or anything that FM was inferior, I had just never heard music coming from a tuner sound so bad!

 

It didn't use to be that way.
Back in '60 to '75 radio stations were privately owned and great pride was taken in the quality of the signal.
No absurd compression.
Better music, duh.
I had a Shure 95 on a Garrard table and the local FM stations playing The Doors were much more hifi coming over the air than what I could get out of my turntable.
I was running a chain of HiFi shops throughout Florida and took a Sansui TU-9900 home to see how good FM really sounded.
I found super quality sound using that amazing NON DIGITAL SYNTHESIS---ANALOG tuner.
In fact ANALOG FM tuners WITHOUT digital synthesis chips doing the tuning (instead using a signal strength meter and tuning by ear into the meat of the signal) were the bomb.
A couple years later cheap digital synthesis tuning sections gave everything a glassy hard sound and the stations were all sold to a giant conglomerate that didn't give a damn about anything except having a monopoly.
I warned my friends to stop listening to the FM robotic "noise" stations and support the local scene but nobody cared and we got crap as soon as the majors drove the mom and pop stations out of business.
Now I believe instead of thousands of privately owned stations we have maybe 13 corporations owning most of the US market!
FM in its glory days was a BEAST.

 

Still enjoy FM regularly here. Fortunate to receive 3 different NPR stations which mostly play classical during the day; jazz at night with occasional sprinklings of alternative/local talent/retro music, all of whose sound quality is excellent.

Radio has done more to expose me to a wider variety of different music over the years far more than any other medium, which it continues to this day.
Unless you know what you're looking for, you would otherwise never know to seek out music material that you've never heard of.

Those who dismiss FM through a high quality tuner don't know what they're missing.

 

Any more photos?

 

I have a friend who took in a very large floor standing radio from the 1940s. He had to get it running again. Had almost all of the original tubes and a gigantic speaker inside of it. Well when it was all tuned up he called me over to listen to an AM broadcast. It was amazing to say the least. I was aghast at the size of the voices, the image depth etc. that you normally never hear from AM. Those old timers knew what the heck they were doing! In the days before TV I could well imagine listeners enjoying a level of realism, and an intimacy with the programs that are unknown in this day and age.

 

I have a Pye radio which my parents bought in 1950. It was on this that I first heard the Beatles.
Only the speaker works now but I have it connected to a modern Yamaha amplifier and I like to play mono 50s and 60s recordings through it. It sounds quite amazing for its age and makes a nice change from my larger speakers.

This is an identical model:

 

A lot of people still enjoy the big fat sound of older jukeboxes which is also fine, but by no means is it anything close to accurate music reproduction.