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I've always been fond of high quality audio. I built a vintage setup after moving out of my parent's house. I am using a stereo from the 70s, speakers from the 60s, and my dad's turntable from the 80s. I use a small form factor Dell PC for streaming. All audio that goes from my media PC to my stereo has been ripped using Exact Audio Copy. It also goes through a USB DAC which also improves the sound quality as well. I use JRiver as my Media PC software. I am pretty happy with the results.
As far as my equipment goes:
Sony PS-LX2 Turntable with an Audio Technica cartridge my dad installed.
It may be a "niche" marketplace today, but "record revivals" are going strong in many areas of the country. Some of the sale days are so mobbed that our local record shops (selling new and used) have to limit the number of customers in the store. They issue "tickets" to get into the store, a better way to keep the line moving.
As well, high end audio is having quite a resurgence with a lot of folk not satisfied with electronic noise anymore. Mid-Fi stuff of years ago doesn't cut it for high end audio today. The prices are astronomical compared to high end of years ago and business is booming for many.
I have monitor 70's, monitor 60's, CS2.... they're going on 10 years old now.. sound fine, no blown tweeters. The sub is a Rythmik LV12R.
I listen to all digital files, with 75% of my collection being FLAC, though honestly I'm hard pressed to tell the difference between FLAC and 320K MP3.. heck 128K OPUS files almost sound transparent to me... I encoded my music collection with 90K OPUS files and put it on my phone. Almost transparent, much better than satellite radio's 40K, takes up paltry space.
HDMI out via a GTX 970 to my receiver. Movie collection is also in digital format. I prefer less clutter and junk around the house. I'd rather have the SNES game as a ROM and play with an emulator than have a console and old cartridges sitting around. As I get older I find I care less about audiophile sound quality, though I still like music that is properly mastered, which is why the classic rock like Pink Floyd is preferred when I'm relaxing around the home theater.. save the Green Day, Seether, and more modern crappily mastered stuff for the portable listening.
I have monitor 70's, monitor 60's, CS2.... The sub is a Rythmik LV12R...75% of my collection being FLAC, though honestly I'm hard pressed to tell the difference between FLAC and 320K MP3.. heck 128K OPUS files almost sound transparent to me... I encoded my music collection with 90K OPUS files and put it on my phone. Almost transparent, much better than satellite radio's 40K, takes up paltry space....HDMI out via a GTX 970 to my receiver....I'd rather have the SNES game as a ROM and play with an emulator than have a console and old cartridges sitting around...
A guy I went to college with started his own business putting bottle caps on top of tables. He gets old tables at antiques shops, yard sales, off the street, re-purposes them, and sells them to people. At first this was just his own personal hobby, but now it's a nice side business. I have two in my condo actually, one in the picture I posted and the other in my theater room in the basement.
Converted all my CDs, LPs, cassettes to a lossless format stored on large hard drives. Did the same with my VHS, DVDs, and others. Put all the drives in a $30 Rigid case gutted out so the portable drives can fit. But to an audio hobbyist this tantamount to fire-burning heresy.
IT is a popular hobby. A lot of people like to go round to second hand stores and buy up all the old audiophile equipment for a few dollars and put together the dream system they never could afford but wanted when the fad was big. My brother has done this. The hard thing to find is good speakers. Bose 901s or Klipschhorns still bring a pretty penny and many times the foam and/or cones need replacing. I remember when I and pretty near all my friends were into the fad, the saying was "your system is only as good as the weakest component." Then, as now that was usually the speakers.
Some people got really carried away with it and put tens of thousands into their sound system. Now you can build the same system for maybe $800 if you are patient.
There were of course the audio snobs who would scoff at such mass marketed things as 901s and proudly display their semi custom made speakers with five Macintosh tube amplifiers and a $1900 turntable that requried $300 cartidges every six months. Then they came out with CDs and comparatively inexpensive mini speaker systems that sounded nearly as good as the $5,000 room fillers. Suddenly Joe Consumer's $500 system sounded just about as good and Snobbish McAudiophile's lifetime savings daily tuned system and the whole fad sort of unraveled. Most people cannot hear the difference anyway, especially after years of super loud music.
I remember my BIL has a whole bedroom dedicated to his sound system and record collection. The giant JBL speakers pretty much filled his living room. While it sounded good and could play amazingly loud, playing music so loud no one can talk, becomes uninteresting pretty quickly unless maybe if you are at a concert.
The remainder of the room was filled with records in bins simlar to the bins in stores. He would buy a specially mastered record, clean and demagnetize is in a special expensive machine for that purpose, put the record on the pricy turntable and record it oonto an expensive metal cassette tape. Then he would put the rcord back into the sleeve, seal it up in a plastic vacuum bag and nevr play it again unless the tape wore out or got garbled or whatever.
When CDs came out, they suddenly had a spare bedroom.
There are still some of those old audiophile one uppers around. They will go on and on about their system that fills a room or two in their house and imagin they can distinctly hear a pronounced difference in their system, despite study after study determining we really cannot hear the differences, especially not if we are over 30. Still it is a funny fad and makes an interesting hobby. If I did nto have other priorities, I could see getting back into it, especially with the equipment now so cheap. It was amazing how much people knew about sound back then.
I put together a vintage system, Marantz receiver, beautiful rebuilt Marantz turntable, Advents, on a Stickley library table.
Don't use it much, I'll probably just end up eBay'ing the pieces. For music, for me it's hard to beat a PC + something like a class T amp + some decent speakers. For a jazz guy, there's just too much interesting music on youtube.
To be fair, since I hit the thrift stores, it's tempting to load up on the old products when you can. I had a fascination with Sony ES gear for a while (it's in a pile in the garage), silver face Pioneer, the more premium Japanese mini-systems. The internet can drive you down a lot of dark alleys in the acquisition world, but it's all just stuff.
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