Potentially the longest thread in history...

[PP Mguire]

The 803 D3 is about £13k a pair here - and they'd be purely for a stereo hifi system. I would buy cheaper front and rear speakers for the AV home theatre, as it's more about high SPL and low distortion rather than extracting the final percentage of timbre or detail like with hifi. But the SVS 16's are about 2500 each. So maybe £25000 all said and done...I doubt I will spend that much really. Probably £10k. But a man can dream.

Im sure the B&Ws are not worth the money and I can get something 95% as good for less than half the price. But I just happen to think they look sweet too, and I've always kind of had a lust for them ever since I've seen them. I would buy them if I ever had the money spare and a suitable house, but no, they definitely do not offer value for money haha. At least with the actual speakers they actually do make a large difference being the things that actually make the sound



Haha, no I definitely don't need too. But I have a love affair with B&W 800 series speakers. They've been a life long dream. I will probably never own them so they will remain that way.

Well at least somebody likes them, I think they're a bit ugly lol.

 

[kmanmx]

Sacrilege ! take it back ! Nah I'm joking, there are better looking speakers. But I like their history and reputation as much as their looks.

 

[PP Mguire]

Sacrilege ! take it back ! Nah I'm joking, there are better looking speakers. But I like their history and reputation as much as their looks.

One up on me there, idk much about them besides that they make badass stuff. If I had money and wanted a wacky looking cab setup I'd want the Nautilus.

 

[Joe C]

I think it looks wild and if it was not so expensive, I'd consider getting that too

 

[Wallaby Dan]

I don't know, Back in 2005 i bought a 5.1 Pioneer system. It still works great today. To me it sounds better than the new stuff! I love the sound it has and will miss that when or if it dies before me.

 

[kmanmx]

I don't know, Back in 2005 i bought a 5.1 Pioneer system. It still works great today. To me it sounds better than the new stuff! I love the sound it has and will miss that when or if it dies before me.

Wouldn't surprise me, speakers don't change a lot. There are 30 year old speakers that still hold their own today. Technically the newer high end speakers are built using computer simulations, FEA tools etc so they should theoretically be tuned better and have less secondary/tertiary harmonic distortions. But it's not like they are massively better, it's a subtle thing. And I would still bet most speakers at normal prices are not built with such care and attention to make them any better at all.

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And in other news, fuck me. Nothing like starting your monday by being called out at 4am to fix a problem you have no idea how to fix.

 

[PP Mguire]

My best friend is still using a Sony 5.1 he got from Walmart back in like 2004. He really doesn't give a shit about audio.

 

[Joe C]

I don't know, Back in 2005 i bought a 5.1 Pioneer system. It still works great today. To me it sounds better than the new stuff! I love the sound it has and will miss that when or if it dies before me.

Yup.
I upgraded my Fisher STV884 speakers. Before they sounded very "boomy" so I replaced the tiny capacitors on the crossovers with much larger audio grade caps of the same values. I then added some insulation behind the woofer and I was going to add some more bracing inside the cabinet but I never got around to doing that. They actually sound much better just by fixing the caps and adding a little insulation. I got these new in 1986

 

[Joe C]

Back in the 1950's, 60's and 70's American engineers that made audio here in the U.S. used great care with the quality even with the limited resources they had back then. You'll see a lot of those audio "aficionado's" have a love for old audio because of the type of sound they produced, but after the Japanese buy-outs, the quality went down the tube and it turned into a production finance game with no care for real audio quality.
There is still a good demand for old audio equipment from the 50's through 70's because it has more value today than it did back then

 

[Wallaby Dan]

Back in the 70's i bought a Radio Shack stereo with a turntable and a 8 track recorder, later a cassette recorder. Later a 4 head Vcr recorder. Look how far we have come, and how things have gone downhill from those days till now. When cd's came out they were junk sounding! Sound was so bad i didn't switch over till late 1999 on. I still don't like as much as my old cassetes. They are getting bad as they age. Even usb sticks sound all that great. But newer head units in my truck needs that as it don't have cd player. Remember vibrasonic speakers from the 50's? Had a pair in my 64 van.