Burn out - and finding the joy in Quad again

[gvl_guy]

If I may offer a bit of an opinion, I think that a big part of the problem you have is EBay. It all seems to wonderful. Tons of glorious equipment all described in glowing terms by sellers. And when it arrives? Rotted out garbage they no doubt found at garage sales. I will never buy anything more complicated than an old SQ decoder on EBay. For me, EBay is good for records, often, but never electronics and never ever vintage electronics. When I need something, I bite the bullet and get it from someone that has already rebuilt it that I trust. It never ceases to amaze me that 'Fabulous, super rare, super desirable Sansui receivers' are always available for a few hundred bucks. And the 'work great' except that only one of four channels has sound, the other three have static, and even that is only in tape monitor and not using the preamp and on and on. Its just not worth the headache. You get what you pay for and caveat emptor and all that crap. But, when it all comes together...BLISS!!!!

I'm 100% with you. I wouldn't trust any vintage electronics off eBay. I did it once, a NOS JVC demodulator. When I got it, it definitely was brand new, but it wouldn't turn on. I had a local stereo shop repair it. They had it for months looking for some kind of relay. I tried it once and got frustrated, put it back in the box. It sits in a closet.

In the meantime, I opened my federal stimulus check wallet, bit the bullet, contacted the QRX Restore and bought a fully refurbished Sansui 9001. It's beautiful. CD-4 works perfect. Decoder sounds amazing especially in the synthesize mode. But, it's not without its quirks. Not a day goes by that my heart doesn't skip a beat everytime I turn it on....wondering what could fail on this 47 year old piece of equipment as I flip that switch. (It was already shipped back once due to a problem....I even forget what it was.)

Ebay is best for records. And even at that, sometime "near mint" is a joke. BTW, tip: I found that stuff from an estate sale is usually pretty great. Likely someone's personal stash and treated well. That's what's probably going to happen to all my stuff when I kick it. I have no one to leave it all to.

 

[Scott65]

BTW, tip: I found that stuff from an estate sale is usually pretty great. Likely someone's personal stash and treated well. That's what's probably going to happen to all my stuff when I kick it. I have no one to leave it all to.

Same here - will be DVD-A, SACD and blu rays in my case.

 

[MidiMagic]

I am glad that I have repair experience.

My problem with vintage is getting obscure parts (mostly ICs).

Here's the dope on electrolytic capacitors:
- They fail after 15-20 years of disuse.
- If the equipment is in constant use, usually they keep going.

On eBay, I buy the older transistor equipment. I can usually fix it myself.
I also buy several of the cheap ones - I can usually make a few good ones out of them.

I also keep DeoxIT around.

My oldest piece is my Collaro TSC-640 Conquest. I have had to repair it only 6 times during its 60 years of existence. I have made upgrade modifications many more times than that.

I still have and use my four Nubian 345 speakers from 1974.

I seem to have trouble with RCA cables than anything else.

I have lost more television sets than anything else.

The problem with tube equipment is getting replacement tubes.

I am mostly interested in the old formats (particularly LPs). I do not want to have to fool with all of the various new digital formats (other than CD and DVD) with all of the wacky copy protection and various encoding schemes.

 

[mlrocker]

just go with modern stuff. it will play quad mixes digitally no problem. you won't miss anything and you can fiddle on your smartphone at the same time.

your tastes do change over time, you have to be accepting of yourself too.

 

[par4ken]

I am glad that I have repair experience.

My problem with vintage is getting obscure parts (mostly ICs).

Here's the dope on electrolytic capacitors:
- They fail after 15-20 years of disuse.
- If the equipment is in constant use, usually they keep going.

On eBay, I buy the older transistor equipment. I can usually fix it myself.
I also buy several of the cheap ones - I can usually make a few good ones out of them.

I also keep DeoxIT around.

My oldest piece is my Collaro TSC-640 Conquest. I have had to repair it only 6 times during its 60 years of existence. I have made upgrade modifications many more times than that.

I still have and use my four Nubian 345 speakers from 1974.

I seem to have trouble with RCA cables than anything else.

I have lost more television sets than anything else.

The problem with tube equipment is getting replacement tubes.

I am mostly interested in the old formats (particularly LPs). I do not want to have to fool with all of the various new digital formats (other than CD and DVD) with all of the wacky copy protection and various encoding schemes.

The only chips that I've found hard or impossible to find are the Tate chips. I remember the Motorola SQ chips being discontinued in the early eighties but now eBay if full of of them, mostly from China. I had a problem with a Sony SQ decoder and found all the Sony chips readily available on eBay as well. It turned out that I didn't need the IC at all, It just had two hairline cracks on the board cutting through a couple traces, the connections were making and breaking to make maters worse. The point is that If you search eBay you can find almost any chip that you need. The Sansui QS chips are all available as well, both from US and Chinese sellers.

I think that TV's have always had the most problems, partially because they are so heavily used. In any case they are hardly worth fixing especially the the older ones. New set are available cheaply, used fully functioning ones are often available for free!

Tubes are plentiful. I haven't attended a Hamfest in a number of years but there were always people there with lots of tubes for sale. Antique Electronics Supply has almost every tube that you can imagine. And eBay of coarse, the non audio tubes usually sell cheaply.

 

[MidiMagic]

Ebay is best for records. And even at that, sometime "near mint" is a joke. BTW, tip: I found that stuff from an estate sale is usually pretty great. Likely someone's personal stash and treated well. That's what's probably going to happen to all my stuff when I kick it. I have no one to leave it all to.

I had no problems with eBay except for two events.

- In one case the seller moved and the payment was not reaching him.

- In the other case, the seller's address was printed as (town) DE (I can't remember the town name from 24 years ago). When I bid, I thought it was DE = Delaware. It was DE = Deutchland (Germany). It was a relatively rare record, so I went ahead with the deal.

 

[par4ken]

I had no problems with eBay except for two events.

- In one case the seller moved and the payment was not reaching him.

- In the other case, the seller's address was printed as (town) DE (I can't remember the town name from 24 years ago). When I bid, I thought it was DE = Delaware. It was DE = Deutchland (Germany). It was a relatively rare record, so I went ahead with the deal.

I've had only a couple eBay deals that didn't turn out (I've done well over a thousand transactions over the years). One was for a quad record from a seller in Sweden. I never received the record and was not able to contact the seller. I concluded that the seller must have died as the sellers feedback was perfect up to that point afterward there were no further listings. The other was for a set (lot) of CD's from an eastern European seller "CD Maximum Label" that never arrived. I had bought numerous similar CD sets until eBay cut off the sale of those "Russia only" CDs. Using Pay-pal you can always get your money back if the goods don't arrive!

 

[MidiMagic]

The only chips that I've found hard or impossible to find are the Tate chips. I remember the Motorola SQ chips being discontinued in the early eighties but now eBay if full of of them, mostly from China. I had a problem with a Sony SQ decoder and found all the Sony chips readily available on eBay as well. It turned out that I didn't need the IC at all, It just had two hairline cracks on the board cutting through a couple traces, the connections were making and breaking to make maters worse. The point is that If you search eBay you can find almost any chip that you need. The Sansui QS chips are all available as well, both from US and Chinese sellers.

I think that TV's have always had the most problems, partially because they are so heavily used. In any case they are hardly worth fixing especially the the older ones. New set are available cheaply, used fully functioning ones are often available for free!

Tubes are plentiful. I haven't attended a Hamfest in a number of years but there were always people there with lots of tubes for sale. Antique Electronics Supply has almost every tube that you can imagine. And eBay of coarse, the non audio tubes usually sell cheaply.

I have had trouble getting a few specialty chips made for single manufacturers. Nobody else ever heard of them. Some of them were programmed ROMs to operate scientific equipment.

Part of my TV problem is that we had several brownouts when a tree limb fell on a power line without tripping the breaker. The TV sets did strange things with low voltage. They would not turn off, and did not work when the power came back full.

I used to be a ham and I remember getting goodies at Hamfests. I got 3 audio delay units at one Hamfest. None of them worked. All of them have the delay chip internally shorted. The part number matches nothing in any catalog.

 

[jimfisheye]

Kind of illustrates exactly why surround didn't do so well in the early days! Imagine the reaction from average people who don't have the hunger to go after this stuff! (Well we kind of saw that play out and don't have to imagine anything!)

This is a golden age of audio now with 24 bit digital delivery that extends to fully discrete surround files. Old tech is an advanced level of difficulty sometimes!

One day I'll troubleshoot a tricky scenario and find a hard to spot root cause. Then pull off a surface mount repair on a computer logic board. Feeling pretty smart. Then the next 5 days might be full of the most comical blunders and failures you can imagine! Some of these old beasts still have some tricks to pull and fight left in them is all. There's older gear that isn't finished quite yet and old recordings still out there to preserve.

 

[Soundfield]

I remember the Motorola SQ chips being discontinued in the early eighties but now eBay if full of of them, mostly from China.

Yes, but I find that a bit odd. They were practically unobtainable for many, many years and now all of a sudden they are apparently in limitless supply for just a few quid each. As you say most of them seem to come from China. I wonder why that is, did Motorola secretly store chips there and they've just been found?! - I mean, they couldn't possibly be fakes could they?! I've occasionally looked at a few of the ads for some of them and frankly very many look, shall we say, dodgy. Motorola had a particular chip encapsulation style that a lot of them don't share, the font can look wrong and the date codes often don't make sense, and some just look too sparkly new to be fifty years old! I'm not sure of a truly reliable source of the genuine article anymore.

 

[gene_stl]

I don't think you can generalize about age. I am running gear that is mainly Japanese from the mid 70s. As I have been putting the system back together after a big move I have a new young friend with a bench and an Audio Precision distortion analyzer and everything from the seventies is working much better than I hoped.

The complexity of the new gear may make it less reliable. Anything built since our European allies instituted ROHS (Removal of Hazardous Substances ie LEAD!) is suspect out of the box until proven innocent as far as I am concerned. This is because at my day job it has devolved from repairing scientific gear that may have worn out or had some reason for a failure, to repairing control boards on stuff that is essentially brand new and suffering digital control board failures. Day in and day out. Every Goddamn hot plate stirrer has a microcontroller. Mounted too near a heating element. And the smaller geometry of the controller chips means more stages of amplification from the logic to the power levels. Microscopic unrepairable sets of leads on the chips.

Then there is the issue of made in China. Not to be racist but the china electronics industry has just not proven themselves to produce long term reliable consumer electronic gear. I have a Crown power amp with a splurped filter cap from a notorious lot of chinese filter caps that were supposedly copied from a japanese company by a hired away employee. He didn't have the right formula and there are zillions of these out there. Probably about 15 years old. Not vintage.

Audio generally and multichannel specifically is very complex. So the equipment is complex too. No way to get away from it.

I have had thousands of good ebay transactions and only a very short handful of steeenkers.

I don't take vacuum tube gear , even when it is offered to me for free.

 

[ssully]

I find listening to the original sources tend to bring me more joy than the conversions. I'm sure many of you will find that ironic. Or maybe that makes me moronic. I'm beyond burnt out when it comes to my spare time hobbies, and am now looking for the joy again.

If you want to use an AVR's room EQ DSP -- no doubt the most revolutionary invention for home audio in the last few decades -- digitizing your collection is really your only choice (and should be transparent).

Unless someone markets a multichannel RCA-to-HDMI converter.

Which I suspect will never happen.

 

[ArmyOfQuad]

Eh, I'm not all that thrilled with the AVR EQs to be honest. It seems to be billed as some magical thing that with a few tones and a microphone, fine tunes everything for perfection in your room. I've never heard anything remotely good from the automated setup, and I've played with that A LOT. I always end up having to manually tune in the speaker levels, and EQ settings. At which point - it's just another EQ that I'm manually setting, which only applies to some of the inputs on the receiver. I dunno, maybe I look at it wrong, but to me, it's just mostly useless modern digital garbage, and it's taken me a lot of hours of trial and error to come to that feeling about it.

I seem to just be unhappy with just about every piece of audio equipment that has passed through here, everything has their flaws, and it's always quite maddening to me when it's like - with a little thought and a little common sense, these devices could have been oh so much better.

Using external graphic equalizers on the multi-channel input on the Denon receiver is the best compromise I've come up with at this time. When it comes to vintage quad, the Denon is nothing more than an amplifier at this point. Which has me questioning - is it the best option for an amplifier? What should I be using for an amplifier? I'm quite happy with my brand new turntables and the cartridges on them - but am I really getting the full benefit of those running through a home theater amplifier? I'm not sure any serious audiophile would setup a hi-end turntable through a mid range Denon home theater receiver. What would an audiophile do? But what is an audiophile anyways? And then that brings us back to plenty of options for quality vintage amps, but that's back to the vintage battle I'm burnt out on.

What sounds good? I don't know anymore. Anytime I listen to my conversions, usually all I hear are the limitations I spent hours trying to compromise with to get the best possible conversion. When I listen to the actual tape or record, I hear a tape or record. Converting things can sometimes kill the joy. Not that I didn't enjoy parts of the process - just that.....it's such a bittersweet mixture of feelings that I have to deal with, and these days I'm struggling to find the joy anymore.

Ah well - I have things hooked up through EQs, and that's enough to find a little joy for now.

 

[mandrix]

If you mean the one I linked,

27.91US $ 30% OFF|8 Ports 2 output Composite 3 RCA Video Audio AV Switch Switcher splitter Box Selector 8in 2out 8x2 for HDTV LCD DVD|av switch|3 rcarca video - AliExpress

Its 8 in and 2 out, not 1. It will allow for a combined 6 output channels, 2 sets of 3 channels each. Inputs are also ganged in sets of 3 for a total of 4 switchable 6 channel sources.

Edit: I'm wrong. You would need two of these boxes to switch 5.1 audio. The outputs are not independent. sorry.

No problem! If you look at enough of them they all start to look alike. Just tryin' to help but after about 40 minutes I got tired of seeing the same thing over and over.
You know I looked for quite a while this morning and could not find one 5.1 capable switcher. I did find a couple that would switch 5 input jacks though. Well I found one used one, and it's exactly like the two Phillips switches I have, and it's used....for about what I think I paid for two new ones. lol.

I'm not an electronics guru but I kept thinking one could build a relay-based switch and it would have the added advantage of being "clearer" than mosfet based switching. I got on YouTube and started looking around and think I found a cheapish way to do it.

 

[mandrix]

If you want to use an AVR's room EQ DSP -- no doubt the most revolutionary invention for home audio in the last few decades -- digitizing your collection is really your only choice (and should be transparent).

Unless someone markets a multichannel RCA-to-HDMI converter.

Which I suspect will never happen.

Yeah, probably right. Well I saw a lot earlier today (wasn't searching for them but they get pushed on Amazon) but no 6 input ones that I know of. Not really sure, wasn't looking for that but they kept coming up. I did see I think 3 RCA in. One for video and two for audio I suspect.

 

[tonyE]

Here's another reason why I HATE the flippers.

https://reverb.com/item/50805823-ak...dium=affiliate&utm_source=partnerstack-legacy
In fact, I HATE REVERB too!

Here's a flipper trying to sell an Akai AS980 for $2500 plus shipping.

Now, I bought one of these six years ago from a guy in British Columbia for $200. Right now it is being rebuilt... it will likely me run about another 800 or 900 to do so. As it now stands, I've already spent 400 in it to get cleaned up a little, it 'works", but I want it rebuilt so it can be used as a daily unit, if I so wish.

Now... here comes this a$$, on Reverb, of course, and he asks for a million bucks for something that is most likely half toast... but, Oh! It must be "MINT"... Good luck.

Note his comment: "Tuner works fine, knob is a bit stiff. "

Seriously? $2500?

BTW, I got burnt on eBay back in 2000. I bought a used Marantz 4140 integrated amp and the bastard sent me a 2240. He said he'd made a "mistake" in the post, it was not a 4140. Needless to say he ran a pawn shop in Port Angeles, WA and he pissed me off. He KNEW what he was doing. I ended up getting most of the money refunded because I didn't want to bother shipping it back.. eventually, I gave it away... the 2240 is not one of the good sounding receivers... yet, today, the hipsters and flippers are dealing at $800 for that POS.

Yeah, this hobby no longer brings me much joy either. Maybe I'll just sell most of my stuff to the hipsters for stratospheric prices (*), buy a used pair of Harbeth 30.1's ( we always need more speakers ) and settle down.

Well, I'm still in the hobby, but I think I'll just stick with Hi End from now on. I get excellent results from hifishark.com. Just have to ignore the hipsters and the flippers with their penchant for getting solid state stuff from the 70s.

(*) After all, my stuff is special because it's "mint", "carefully taken care of" and "it's MINE".. so it's worth a lot more than anybody else's. Besides, none of the knobs in my stuff are "a bit stiff"...

 

[mandrix]

Eh, I'm not all that thrilled with the AVR EQs to be honest. It seems to be billed as some magical thing that with a few tones and a microphone, fine tunes everything for perfection in your room. I've never heard anything remotely good from the automated setup, and I've played with that A LOT. I always end up having to manually tune in the speaker levels, and EQ settings. At which point - it's just another EQ that I'm manually setting, which only applies to some of the inputs on the receiver. I dunno, maybe I look at it wrong, but to me, it's just mostly useless modern digital garbage, and it's taken me a lot of hours of trial and error to come to that feeling about it.

I seem to just be unhappy with just about every piece of audio equipment that has passed through here, everything has their flaws, and it's always quite maddening to me when it's like - with a little thought and a little common sense, these devices could have been oh so much better.

Using external graphic equalizers on the multi-channel input on the Denon receiver is the best compromise I've come up with at this time. When it comes to vintage quad, the Denon is nothing more than an amplifier at this point. Which has me questioning - is it the best option for an amplifier? What should I be using for an amplifier? I'm quite happy with my brand new turntables and the cartridges on them - but am I really getting the full benefit of those running through a home theater amplifier? I'm not sure any serious audiophile would setup a hi-end turntable through a mid range Denon home theater receiver. What would an audiophile do? But what is an audiophile anyways? And then that brings us back to plenty of options for quality vintage amps, but that's back to the vintage battle I'm burnt out on.

What sounds good? I don't know anymore. Anytime I listen to my conversions, usually all I hear are the limitations I spent hours trying to compromise with to get the best possible conversion. When I listen to the actual tape or record, I hear a tape or record. Converting things can sometimes kill the joy. Not that I didn't enjoy parts of the process - just that.....it's such a bittersweet mixture of feelings that I have to deal with, and these days I'm struggling to find the joy anymore.

Ah well - I have things hooked up through EQs, and that's enough to find a little joy for now.

I certainly don't know how good ALL EQ programs are on AVR's but the one's I've had on two Onkyo's left something to be desired. On my current one, and with the speakers I own ...If I run the EQ program as a 5.0.2 (atmos heights/no sub) it's hard to listen to even tv for all the booming sounds coming from the Center (2x6" woofers, tweeter). The equalizer in it is totally worthless to compensate. So I turn on the sub I barely use to do the EQ with the program built in. It turns out much closer to what I like with only minor adjustments.

 

[ssully]

Yeah, probably right. Well I saw a lot earlier today (wasn't searching for them but they get pushed on Amazon) but no 6 input ones that I know of. Not really sure, wasn't looking for that but they kept coming up. I did see I think 3 RCA in. One for video and two for audio I suspect.

AOQ only needs 4 inputs. Where did you find a quad RCA-to-HDMI converter?

 

[par4ken]

If you want to use an AVR's room EQ DSP -- no doubt the most revolutionary invention for home audio in the last few decades -- digitizing your collection is really your only choice (and should be transparent).

Unless someone markets a multichannel RCA-to-HDMI converter.

Which I suspect will never happen.

For most rooms I fail to see the need for EQ DSP. I like the sound of my rooms just fine the way they are! I don't think that DSP can do much with an overly reverberant room. Soft furnishings or sound deadening panels could help in that case. Likewise I don't think that time delay is necessary, you set it up for your sweet spot but make it worse everywhere else! I do like to digitize my collection but more for convenience and so that I don't wear out my albums as I often did in the past. Of coarse it's different when you have thousands of albums compared to say fifty, obviously any particular album does not get played nearly as often!

 

[ssully]

Eh, I'm not all that thrilled with the AVR EQs to be honest. It seems to be billed as some magical thing that with a few tones and a microphone, fine tunes everything for perfection in your room. I've never heard anything remotely good from the automated setup, and I've played with that A LOT. I always end up having to manually tune in the speaker levels, and EQ settings.

Speakers levels have always been spot on (at least as verified with a level meter) when I use Audyssey. (Distances too). I usually up the subwoofer level a bit from what's measured, as a preference.

At which point - it's just another EQ that I'm manually setting, which only applies to some of the inputs on the receiver. I dunno, maybe I look at it wrong, but to me, it's just mostly useless modern digital garbage, and it's taken me a lot of hours of trial and error to come to that feeling about it.

For me, it's a game changer, particularly the ability to knock down modal resonances.

One still has to live with enormous album-to-album EQ differences , thanks to a complete lack of standards in the recording industry, but that's not something room correction is meant for. As Floyd Toole notes, that's what tone controls are for.

Using external graphic equalizers on the multi-channel input on the Denon receiver is the best compromise I've come up with at this time. When it comes to vintage quad, the Denon is nothing more than an amplifier at this point. Which has me questioning - is it the best option for an amplifier? What should I be using for an amplifier? I'm quite happy with my brand new turntables and the cartridges on them - but am I really getting the full benefit of those running through a home theater amplifier?

Amps are amps. They are commodities. As long as you aren't stressing them by playing stuff louder than they or your loudspeakers can handle, you're OK. You won't get any benefits that would hold up in a level matched blind comparison, from switching to standalones or some combination of stereo receivers.

I'm not sure any serious audiophile would setup a hi-end turntable through a mid range Denon home theater receiver.

A lot of 'serious audiophiles' are suckers.

What would an audiophile do? But what is an audiophile anyways? And then that brings us back to plenty of options for quality vintage amps, but that's back to the vintage battle I'm burnt out on.

If you think glowing tubes look cool, there's that option too.

What sounds good? I don't know anymore. Anytime I listen to my conversions, usually all I hear are the limitations I spent hours trying to compromise with to get the best possible conversion. When I listen to the actual tape or record, I hear a tape or record.

I don't get why. If just playing the 'actual tape or record' sounds good as is, simply digitizing that output should sound good too. What else are you doing during the conversion?