Is it true that old speakers and amps are a lot more powerful than the new stuff today? For example, I been over to my friends house and he has such dusty, old and crusty audio separates but they go so loud and his old speakers hit hard. Also the sound is so warm on old equipment. Does anybody remember the Technics separates? Why is that stuff so much better?
I owned a couple Technics pieces when I was a kid and they were the most underpowered amps I ever owned. The 1200 series turntable on the other hand is built like a tank (and unfortunately sounds bit like one unless it's modified)..very durable and reliable.
Technics - grey, veiled, warm, fuzzy, inarticulate treacle...well, at least, all the Technics I ever heard, except for a particular double cassette deck which sounded bright and thin...
There has been a move away from warm sounding HiFi to a much cleaner sound. Now the problem with this is that a cleaner sound can easily become a clinical sound and in the pursuit of cleanliness one loses the point of the exercise, so it's easy to perceive a relatively cohesive, if warm and somewhat inarticulate presentation as being more engaging than a far higher resolving more articulate yet less engaging presentation. Certainly, there are many who prefer the former to the latter, and they are still served by some modern equipment.
Another thing to bear in mind is the general design of speakers which have moved away from fairly efficient, responsive things to quite inefficient difficult to drive things. Again, the older models were less accurate but made up for it in fun. Many new models are far more accurate and yet often sound uninvolving - and since they're hard work, it's more difficult for an amplifier to drive them to the same levels that the relatively more responsive units of old could manage.
Thats a bit of an unfair comparison David as tubes will never have the same power as solid state. You would do yourself better to compare vintage solid state equipment. Then again, it depends on what we are considering as "vintage".
When the market became inundated with cheap and light sand amps from Japan, which could be shipped more cheaply and safely than tubed units, the big launch of big watts made speaker manufacturers go mad with designs that older tubed amps could not handle.
The wattage wars really went over the top in the 70's and 80's with claims of fame and a Chicago roll of precision. (google Chicago roll).
Speaker builders went nuts with multiple drivers that looked like an array sometimes, but were poorly thought out and even shabbier in build and performance.
Blame it all on weight and shipping costs after the oil crisis in 1973.
