I have to say, one of the few types of equipment for audio reproduction which has actually improved over the years has been with speakers. Newer, lighter materials for cones and panels, in the case of electrostatic types and a more science-based approach have helped immensely I think.

I’ve not sampled all vintage speakers though, and I’m sure there were some truly great ones.

Well there’s not ‘endgame’ here. Originally, after they realized that the wax/shellac cylinder and disk could be useful for more than simply dictation, audio equipment became the means of bringing performances by famous musicians to more people than could fit in a music hall.

Along the way the sound quality improved to the point where people started realizing that maybe this was more than just a way to hear scratchy, nasally distorted recordings of their favourites and could reproduce instruments in a convincing enough manner that one might start to think they were in the room with them.

Add to that the desire of many to tinker with technical things and the tinkering itself became the ‘endgame’ as such.

The very first piece of ‘serious’ audio gear had to be my dad’s hand-me down Sony TC-230. It was a reel tape deck with an amp built in that had pretty decent sound. Into this I ran a rather crap BSR turntable from a plastic-y console thing, but later moved to a Technics SL-232 with an AT cartridge.

Later I upgraded to a Leak integrated amp that sounded absolutely blah and bland, leaving me wondering why all the audio magazines of the day fauned all over the brand. Speakers were some Zenith cheapies that didn’t sound awful and then some rather aged (even for the late 70s) National Panasonic speakers.

LOL, here in Bermuda getting rid of the tuner would improve it’s performance greatly. The local radio (all FM) has only bad soca/bad reggae/modern R&B/religious programming, with one American top forty station thrown in for bad measure. Barf, etc.

Off on a tangent of a tangent, back in the 70s, until they acquired satellite receivers, the local FM station used to play it’s selection of top 40 on a literal wall of Revox reel tape decks. I understand they junked them when they went to satellite programming, and now I must hide in the dark and cry in my pillow for another hour having dredged up that thought again.

Analog. You get the full waveforms, as opposed to digital, in which the computer chops up the sound into x number of blips.

Actually, it’s the fact that the vinyl record was the most popular medium for delivering analog audio. A better media would be the open reel tape, but there are far less commercially released titles available and the machines are expensive and temperamental, etc.