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Comment by PaulDavisThe1st | Hacker News Reader

2021: 1TB SD cards available for portable audio at any quality level you could desire. Arbitary quality DACs available at almost any price point. Powered speakers with matched internal amplification. Subwoofers.

Anyone who thinks the 1970s is the golden age of audio isn't paying attention.

[ EDIT: also, huge shout out to Bandcamp, where I can sit at home in the comfort of whatever listening system I want (typically for me a set of Genelec studio monitors), peruse vast quantities of music for free (typically listening to whole albums several times before I buy), and then finally choosing anything from MP3 to FLAC as the download format. I mean, my 70s self would not have believed this if I had described it to them. ]

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And all of that fun 1970s and 80s audio gear is dirt cheap at most thrift stores. You might have to hunt a bit but people are happily dumping old turntables, stereo amps, etc. for nothing. So if you want a fun little retro stereo setup it's never been a better time.

At the low price point, you can get a digital audio player with a human-ears-perfect DAC and a human-ears-perfect amplifier for under $100, that will feed headphones of sufficient quality for between $50 and $200 depending on your criteria.

(And it's all portable.)

Can you share an example?

https://ifi-audio.com/products/go-blu/ https://www.fiio.com/btr52021

https://ifi-audio.com/products/zen-dac/

https://shenzhenaudio.com/products/topping-dx3pro-bluetooth-...

https://drop.com/buy/massdrop-sennheiser-hd6xx

Worth perusing

You can have a look at https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php and its reviews section. This is a good site in general (there are others) if you are interested in audio reproduction topics and reviews that are supported by science, not flowery prose of reviews in so called HiFi magazines and sites.

The issue I have had is finding one with a decent interface and decent playlist making ability.

Enough that I am tempted to build my own with a raspberry pi running the Exaile media player.

If it doesn't need to be portable, that's certainly a good way to go. Note that the Allo Boss2 gets you everything except an amplifier and speakers, incluyding a Pi4, assembled, in a nice case, for $185. You might like to run Owntone (formerly forked-daapd) on whatever machine holds your storage - or anything else; the Pi can mount your storage via NFS or CIFS or basically anything else.

My listening experience has never been better. I have no doubt that my amplifier sounds the same as a high fidelity amplifier made in the 1970s. The measured fidelity of the rest of my signal chain is profoundly better.

I think that digital recording and distribution has been a game changer for the kind of music that I listen to, often obscure, indy musicians. YouTube is a blast.

About a decade ago, I sold my ReVox B77 open reel tape recorder and bought a pocket sized digital recorder.

The gear for live music has improved. I'm a jazz bassist, and a quality amplifier plus speaker now weighs 12 pounds.

Ah, the convenience argument. The red herring of this age

Convenience?

24 bit FLAC sent bit-for-bit perfect to my Burr-Brown converters and then to my Genelecs? This is better quality than anyone in the 1970s could have imagined [ EDIT: including the engineers in the studios where the music was recorded. ]

Convenience for shopping? Well, perhaps. But it's about more than convenience. I discover more music, by more artists, than Tower or HMV could ever have introduced me too.

Convenience can drive accessibility and access to music, which is an enormous driving play in music.

No, the availability argument. Even people who are dirt-poor (by developed country standards, of course) can have top-quality means of listening to and producing audio, thanks to computers, the internet, and Free Software. In the 1970s this was restricted to affluent people. So quite a narrow perspective to say things like that.

We take it for granted but when I think about it I'm amazed that I can on a whim decide I want to listen to Beethoven and 10s later I'm listening to world-class musicians playing any piece I want.

We take it for granted but every now and then, when I think about it, I'm amazed that I can on a whim decide I want to listen to Beethoven and 10s later I'm listening to world-class musicians playing any piece I want. Imagine saying this even 40 years ago.

Modern sound sources hooked to vintage receivers will give you the ease of use of the old shit and about the same quality and content selection as the new shit.

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