Audio talk

[HighlandDougie]

Regarding valve, or tube amplifiers, the first Quad tubed amp was released 20 years ago? Quad has been around since the pre transistor age, and I had thought there were models going back to the fifties.

Rather longer ago than 20 years. The Quad II amp (with valves) was developed and sold from the mid-1950s onwards but was then replaced by the Quad 33 (pre-amp)/303 (power amp) in 1966. These were (are - as I suspect many are still around) solid state designs. This was seen as a pretty revolutionary step at the time but it certainly didn't stop them being a big success. I've just disposed of an Audio Research valve-based Pre-Amp/Power Amp combination which still sounds, well, very fine indeed but, given my rural location and the sheer inconvenience of replacing valves, it was simply gathering dust. Many valves are made in Russia (Sovtek) which currently adds to the inconvenience of replacing them. But, as Richard implies, the "valve" sound is very seductive.

[Frances_iom]

... These were (are - as I suspect many are still around) solid state designs....

I retired my Quad + by necessity the pre-amp some 5 years ago when the main power supply capacitors dried out so that there was a large hum - they are still in my loft. Replaced by Arcam amp - still use the Quad 77 speakers tho.

[Lordgeous]

I retired my Quad + by necessity the pre-amp some 5 years ago when the main power supply capacitors dried out so that there was a large hum - they are still in my loft. Replaced by Arcam amp - still use the Quad 77 speakers tho.

Fairly easily replaced I would guess - my colleague does lots of caps replacements in hifi & studio equipment. Not sure if it would be cost effective tho'.

[Dave2002]

Fairly easily replaced I would guess - my colleague does lots of caps replacements in hifi & studio equipment. Not sure if it would be cost effective tho'.

For a very short period around the 1970s I had a Quad amp or preamp - can't even remember. It was a bit past its sell by date then, so I passed it on. There were indeed valves in much of the kit up until the 1970s.

[richardfinegold]

Interesting. I agree that the streaming companies are primarily focussed on Rock/pop but invariably I find what I'm looking for on Qobuz within seconds. The key is to be precise with your search entry. For example, the recent BAL Mozart Paris symphony gave hopeless results if one merely keyed in "Paris". "Mozart Paris" was better, but somewhat hit and miss with a recording by Emmanuel Pahud recorded presumably in the French capital as the number one result, but "Mozart Paris Freiburger" nailed it. Likewise, if you know the artist then that should give good results although vagaries in spelling and/or other artists involved in the recording may need to be entered to get exactly what you're after.

I had Qobuz for a couple of years, recently downgraded to Apple because my spouse could never get used to the interface and liked the fact that she could pull up Apple on all of her devices. She had learned how to use the Apple search engine and UI with the free 6 months she got after getting her iphone. An Apple membership is $15/month for the two of us and I was paying a bit more for Qobuz for just me. Since I use Streaming primarily to screen recordings Apple does the job. The search engine issues that I had in mind were my own recordings burned to my Melco NAS. When searching them with various apps--Blue OS, Song Kong, m connect, CA Stream Magic-finding the relavent discs can drive one batty. I have learned to stop tossing the discs after I have burned them to the NAS.
Regarding the Search engines of streaming companies such as Apple or Qobuz, they tend to work better, but I still have trouble finding many discs that are favorites, possibly because they not be available commercially. Try entering Karl Ristenpart into one oftherir SE. The results seem to vary by the month

[mathias broucek]

One of my reasons for using my own NAS drive is that I can curate the metadata to find stuff easily (my collection is quite large). It can also be useful for picking a "version" (e.g. 1911/47 Petrushka or anything by Bruckner)