Did the Old Receivers Sound Good?

Back in the late 70's, I assembled what for the times was a pretty decent system.

Not state of the art but it was what I could afford at the time. I had a Yamaha CR2020 receiver, ADS L810 ii speakers and a Denon DP790 turntable.

The turntable and some Stax headphones were acquired at a fire sale. Later added a Sony 3 head tape deck and put a Grace cartridge on the Denon since the Yamaha had a MC input. It was a very satisfying system at the time but as some have mentioned, relying on hearing memory is not reliable.

I still have the CR2020 in storage and gave the speakers to my little brother. currently live with a very modest system, Yamaha, KEF ,Technics TT and a Sony CD/DVD player. For "serious" listening, I Run Amazon Ultra hd from a Dell precision desktop through a JDS DAC and amp to HiFi man Ananda or Sennheiser 600 series headphones. Now living in an Audiophile dealer desert, I can't really compare to newer high end stuff. Probably wouldn't matter as my mid 70 yo ears no longer discern the difference.  

If we look at it from a nostalgic point of view, yes. Oh that smooth, velvety sound of the 70’s.  Just plug in an old system and it’s often not what we remember. I think there was excellent gear back then but not at common man prices. Today, you can get some quality gear for relatively cheap. 

I have fond memories of my old Pioneer when it was new- it sounded very good and the biggest point is that it never sounded offensive.  

I do not believe you can say that about lots of contemporary amplifiers.  

Another thing is that listening to vintage receivers today is not a valid impression.  

I would love to hear a vintage amplifier design made ground up all new parts.  I bet it would surprise....

I picked up a near-mint (in appearance) Sansui AU-517 integrated to go with the TU-717 I've owned for almost 30 years. It's teamed with a pair of Monitor Audio Silver 7s and the sound is unexpectedly good. Clarity and dynamics are there in spades. IMO, for lack of a better term, vintage amps seem to produce music with more 'body' to it. A Sony CDP XA20ES CD player and an Adcom GCD-700 carousel player, both running through an older MSB Gold Link DAC/Powerbase, make CDs sound the best I can recall in a long time. This little system was playing last weekend when two fellows came by to pick up a PS Audio HCA-2/Cary SL-100 combo I was selling. I retired a couple of years ago and have been selling off most of my higher-end (for me) components to beef up my savings. They seemed to be as impressed with the vintage gear's sound as with the newer amp's/preamp's sound through a pair of ADS L-810s (which was pretty sweet). My condo has a very open floor-plan in the area where both of those systems are located, and I think that was a big positive in the equation.

Well my first real setup was a Sony Str 7065 paired $259 and a AR TT with Shure cart $100 from Crazy Eddie's in Blkyn NY.i didn't like the manual TT so sold it and bought a Technics SL1350 with Shure V15 cart $400.Hooked it up to  Bose 901 s 2a which I bought used from a guy on Sutton Pl.in NYC for $315 they were a year old new they went for $575 fair traded,I got the stands and custom made stands with them.Well I was 22 just married 1973 and this system rocked.