One more coming = me :)

[Kake]

I did start my hobby in the last year Superscope did own the whole Marantz company and since then I've liked Marantz stuff. Funny thing is I've been carefully read of gear and listened to everything in my reach and I still like 70s Marantz gear to be good stuff.
That don't stop me listening and investigating anything I can reach but you have to make choices since any equipment seems to have limitations if your budget is limited. So even the P1030 speakers are worth good music for they have overload protection. I did start my hobby with PM250 that had 25watts a side (20-20000Hz, 8ohm, FTC) and that made me overloading my first amp quite often when listening to The Wall or Rainbow. Actually this did occur in most cases with C-cassette because it was recorded in too high level...Does anybody remember those days?
No matter what my likes are I have bought music from iTunes and I even have a free spottily account. Hope we'll have a good time here in the Forum.

[Hyfi]

Welcome to AR

[JoeE SP9]

Welcome to AR.
As for memories; I remember the first "HiFi" cassette deck. It was the Advent 201. Cassettes get played regurlarly here at "Casa JoeE". I've got some recordings only on cassette.

[Hyfi]

I just hooked up my Onkyo-Integra deck the other night to spin some of those special tapes.

[Kake]

Thank you Hyfi and Joe!
To my opinion cassette decks and C-cassette are little bit underestimated equipments. I think there is two main reasons: 1. There've allways been low quality c-cassettes that make sound of any equpiment poor. 2. Practically all cassette decks were not tuned to work (speed, bias, EQ, etc).
So the experience of the cassette deck was in most cases poor since different tapes need different tuning (not only Fe, Fe-Cr, Cr and Metal, but different brands too). The best results without tuning of the deck were disappointing. Anyway separate decks beat any radiorecorder or boom box but you may miss in many cases the qualities of LP and later CD.
On other hand C-cassette should have been the most interesting vehicle to improve the sound by tuning and cleaning and taking care of. Anyway the magic of black vinyl is still unbeatable. :)

[JoeE SP9]

Keeping a cassette deck correctly adjusted for a given tape goes a long way toward getting good results. Fortunately for me my Nak ZX-7 and Teac V-7010 have adjustable bias and level calibration with the necessary built in test tone generators. My LX-5 only has adjustable bias but even that is helpful.

[Kake]

Actually this cassette-thing is one part of my hifi hobby but very interesting part of it. For example having experienced Nakamichi CR 4 E and it's adjustable features made me have all the other decks (almost) adjusted. For example Marantz 5420 is awesome to listen. Especially it's large VU-meters and lights gives the special feeling, something you don't get while listening to SD4000 two speed deck, no matter this 3 head Marantz feels good in many ways. For example a possibility to mix line and mic sound and make recordings.

[thekid]

Welcome to AR!
Nothing wrong with going a little retro with your gear.

I also continue to listen to cassette for music. Partly because I still make my own and partly because I can get quality tapes for 10-50 cents each at the local thrifts.

I ave been fortunate in the past year to pick up a couple of Tascam decks which do just about everything you need from a deck and have VU meters to match up with some of my vintage gear.

[Hyfi]

I am playing my old GRP Christmas collection cassettes right now. I also have some tapes of older albums that still sound better than today's CDs once you ignore the little bit of hiss. So much more life and emotion than digital IMO.

[Kake]

Thank you TheKid!
Sounds that you got it right. VU meters have some magic and fit great with vintage gear.
Hyfi, I think the point for any analogue sound is there is everything no matter the equipments are not perfect, the signal could be perfect if you had perfect set. When you get it digital you have only samples no matter you listen to them with practically perfect equipment. Perfect in digital sound reproduction means no noise, no wow and flutter, no distortion if you don't count the missing information that results problems in the sound. CD is great, but LPs and cassettes have it all.

[Mr Peabody]

The more the merrier :). I don't have my cassettes or Teac deck any more, maybe back when I started with it I should have known about all the adjustments but once I added a "high end" CDP to the system the cassettes hardly ever got played. Still have the vinyl though, do I get points for that :)?

[Kake]

Hi Mr Peabody!
All regards for vinyls (=a whole lot of points)! I agree that CDs are good quality and my personal choice for most listening occasions. No matter how good CD does the job I still like vinyl and must say the magic is there. There is no evidence to show vinyl is the best but to my opinion it's too obvious since CD is just samples. These samples are practically perfect, but still when you are at home relaxing and close your eyes LPs does the trick.
Actually I haven't dug into CD's secret deeply, perhaps I should. I did bought Marantz CD80 when new and it has Philips TDA 1541 S1 to do DAC. Here in Finland local Hifi Magazine did like bitstream conversion and later 18bit, 20bit or 24bit better than these original Philips DACs. I didn't agree with them then and I'm not buying it yet. Perpahs I really should?
Still I believe in 70s Marantz heavy transformers and large capacitors with unbelievable phono stages (3300 pre and 1200 amp). Raw power of old times counts for me. Actually Verde Audios tube amp from 2012 with just 2,5 watts is great if you have right speakers.
The idea is you can't find the final solution and there are a lot of good ones. My aim is to do everything with one set, somebody else looks after some other things then you can pick up a system that does what you want but might not give the satisfaction to somebody else if you are looking for different qualities (bass, mid, sound, naturality, dynamics, what ever is no1 in your list)...
I like this because it gives you practically endless possibilities for discussions and for inventing new things. My friend for example has Oracle Speakers with Ribbon tweeters and they sound great. Especially with tube power amp made by his friend.