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Thread: High end / Cutting edge , Opinions please

  1. #1
    Audio Al is offline Pishanto Specialist & Super-Daftee
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    Default High end / Cutting edge , Opinions please

    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 ???
    [

  2. #2
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    Quote Originally Posted by Audio Al View Post
    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 will use a simple example to answer you question Allen.

    In the early to mid 80's 286 and 386 computers with their green screens and MS-DOS were considered state of the art(SOTA), similarly the good old brick Nokia mobile phones (new tech at the time) was SOTA. Move forward only 10 years and 386's were defunct, 486 PCs had come and gone in 5 years, MS-DOS was dead really and no respecting PC did not run some version of MS - Windows, mobiles phones had shrunk in size, had better battery live and better facilities. Go on into the 00's and Intel chips had evolved through various versions of Pentium, by 97 Celeron was the new chip version, by early 2000's Pentium 4 emerged, Pentium Core came along in various guises and 64 bit processors. Along side this the iPhone came onto the scene which turned the mobile phone into a multi-media device, and all the competitors followed or the died.

    So older components IMO would no longer be considered HE/CE although they were in their time. All chips deteriorate with time and use, whether processors of storage chips, they are effectively a very small but massive (in number) array of switches (on/off, 0 or 1 binary) with various other support circuits. So with use, and exposure to heat variations and atmospherics the switches decay and if it fails then so does the processor or SSD. I have tried to explain in easy to understand terms. This may help explain the sophistication https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...microchips-are
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  3. #3
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    Power supply components are the main problematic parts in older equipment,ie; electrolytic capacitors, rectifiers/diodes, and regulators etc.
    Signal chips tend to have a relatively long life, if they have been used well withing their design parameters, obviously heat play's a big part in the longevity of equipment, and its parts.
    A...
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    Be interesting asking that over on Audio Science Review forum.

    S.
    Shane Lonergan.

  5. #5
    Audio Al is offline Pishanto Specialist & Super-Daftee
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    Quote Originally Posted by southall-1998_mk2 View Post
    Be interesting asking that over on Audio Science Review forum.

    S.
    Not a forum I use
    [

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Audio Al View Post
    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...
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  7. #7
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    At least 95% of the items in my system are over 20 years old.
    Barry

  8. #8
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    I think a major part of High End would be the quality of parts and construction. So an old piece of equipment could still be High End because that quality can last. However, by definition an old piece of equipment cannot be cutting edge.

    And of course the important question is does it still sound good.
    Rob.
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  9. #9
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    I think the use of computer evolution as a parallel is probably not quite appropriate because I regard PCs as on the whole cheapish junk.

    I agree that in general high end stuff is better built with better components, and often under run, ie. capable of a greater demand than is being placed on them.

    I had a Mac SE30 which died in '05, on dismantling the motherboard had '86 on it.

    All my stuff except cartridge is old; 10 to 20 years old, and I've just bought a high end FM tuner which is 40 years old, and it is wonderful, so I'm upgrading to one 35 years old.

    Replacement mechs might be a problem with a player.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pharos View Post
    I think the use of computer evolution as a parallel is probably not quite appropriate because I regard PCs as on the whole cheapish junk.

    I agree that in general high end stuff is better built with better components, and often under run, ie. capable of a greater demand than is being placed on them.

    I had a Mac SE30 which died in '05, on dismantling the motherboard had '86 on it.

    All my stuff except cartridge is old; 10 to 20 years old, and I've just bought a high end FM tuner which is 40 years old, and it is wonderful, so I'm upgrading to one 35 years old.

    Replacement mechs might be a problem with a player.
    "Today scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality"
    Nikola Tesla



    Its now a conspiracy theory to believe that the Immune system is capable of doing the job it was designed to do.
    A fish is only as healthy as the water its swimming in ! [Dr Robert Young]


    www.tubedistinctions.co.uk

    Matthew 5:10

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