Unreal prices

All I can say is I bought a Sony Str 7065 ,70 wpc for $350 from Crazy Eddie's in Bklyn NY in 1973.This was Sonys top of the line Receiver.Its now 2020 and it still works ,nothing has ever been done to it. Sony equipment was made to last .

Old design that were good and at the roof of Audio world many decades ago are always very good even now...My Sansui Au 7700 beat the crap of many more modern amplifiers....But never mind your amplifier....


Why?


Because the secret of Hi-Fi is way less in the hands of the electronical engineers than in the hand of the acoustician....


Speakers drivers-room and ears brain are ONE.... The amplifier and the DAC are externally linked to this One system...Music flows with the sound waves...The electrical signal is a signal not a sound....

Most people has never listened to the true potential of their own audio system, vintage or not, because the acoustical field of their room is not up to the job.... It takes me many years of home experiments to know that first hand.... My best....

mahgister, I'd bet that when we owned and enjoyed what is now 'vintage' (and most of us now having become 'vintage' as well), the means and methods to attain that true potential was unattainable or unaffordable.

Awareness of 'how to' may have been a factor as well.

"Youth is wasted on the young."  Or just simply, wasted youths...;)

mahgister, I'd bet that when we owned and enjoyed what is now 'vintage' (and most of us now having become 'vintage' as well), the means and methods to attain that true potential was unattainable or unaffordable.

Vintage myself ….  :)

You are right, when i takes out of the box my Vintage Sansui i was not thrilled nor so impressed.... 

But when after some years I have learn how to embed it in my room, the  difference was night and day...

I know first hand that, never mind the electronic components, the key is how to implemented it in the 3 dimensional embeddings: mechanical, electrical, and more important acoustical....


That is my point...


The other point is vintage top of the world engineering of the past is enough good today, if rightly embed, to beat more evolved engineering, not so rightly embedded….

My best to you and thanks for your humorous and friendly posts....

I was in the serious audio business for most of my life and spent a good part of it also raising serious show horses. I have rubbed shoulders with a few of the 1% and can echo the earlier comment that those with money can obviously be extra extreme in their unpredictability or irrationality. I think that’s why they need the money--so they can feed their inner freak. Aren’t most of us the same except our income limits our irrationality to $500 AC cables, outdated electronics and vinyl records?
Witness any edition of the classic car auctions on cable. I would pay damn near anything to reacquire the ’57 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser my dad had when I was in high school--or an unreasonable price for my original DQ-10’s. The memories will be gone eventually. Let’s hang on to them while I can still find the PAS-3 and Stereo 70’s to complete the hookup. We’re lucky to be living when the memory aids like photos, recordings and gear are so easily retrieved. I say preservation efforts are a great idea for those who can afford it. We all benefit. Old gear triggers memories!