Originally Posted by
Audio Al
Opinions please re this
If a hifi ( CD ) player was made and first sold from 2003 and at the time was High end / cutting edge , Would that component still be HE / CE ? , or over time with technology moving on at a great rate and the evolution of chips would it now still be HE /CE , Also would older internal components still deteriorate as std models do
Caps need replacing ? along with resistsors / transistor's , dry joints on soldering etc ?
Even high end components change over time , don't they ???
I think you could say that they were still high end. Better measured performance from the latest digital devices can't really translate into better performance in real life as once noise and distortion are below audibility there's not much more that can be done to improve sound quality. And that happened back in the 1980s.
Although not all high end equipment has good measured performance to begin with. Always worth researching that. ASR has found that there are current model high end DACs that only have 13 bit resolution. High price and high end are not always interchangeable.
Component parts will still age and go off spec and fail though. That's true of everything.
I suspect one advantage of buying an old high end cd player is that the people who could afford them new back in the day probably the sort of people who don't have much free time to listen to music so it might well have had little use (assuming the owner didn't leave it powered up all the time). Unlike a budget player that a student or someone else with a lot of time on their hands might have bought.
But of course there's no way to tell that when buying. And of the three Technics SLP1200s that I've owned, the broadcast one that had been used so much the chrome had worn off the play button was the one that lasted the longest before failing...
Current Lash Up:
TEAC VRDS 701T > Sony TAE1000ESD > Krell KSA50S > JM Labs Focal Electra 926.