For those who have heard, and like, the WE room in Munich, there is a wealth of information on Lenco Heaven, and on this site
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi...ml#post2948616
"I thought I'd elaborate on why the top sixties HiFi was better than most junk you buy today. But this is not for discussion. I will simply state 6 good reasons, and you can stuff them in your pipe and smoke them.
1) Engineers were older, had lived through WW2 and had a much broader background in Radio and antennas and high frequencies and would even make their own components like coils and oiled paper capacitors. They had far better mental arithmetic ability than most of you, and could use a Smith chart for matching impedance and a slide rule for calculation much faster than you can with computers:
2) I have no particular axe to grind on transistors versus valves, and in fact classic performers like the Radford STA25 had a single rail transistor preamplifier driving a valve output stage with a defined source impedance. But they were Class A designs with all the lovely cancellation of common-mode that makes them sound so good. The power supply for instance had only to drive a constant current and all electrolytic capacitors had the proper bias which keeps them linear.
3) Record pickups were wide bandwidth and low source inductance moving coil designs. These avoided trying to jump out of the groove due to LC resonances which plagued later moving magnet designs and LP crackle and pop was less obtrusive.
4) Bass speakers would often be 10" paper cones in huge solid closed boxes mounted literally as bookshelves against a wall. Tweeters would often be simple 3" paper cones with a single capacitor crossover. It didn't much matter how good the speaker surround was, because acoustic suspension essentially kept the speaker linear. Frequency response was probably not the last word, but rolled off gently. In fact the reputable WLM La Scala speakers rather recreate these babies.
5) Components like transistors were doubtless not as fast, but then feedback was kept much lower too, so gross distortions like slewing tended to be avoided in favour of gentle rolloff of frequency response.
6) Recording engineers really knew their equipment like the backs of their hands. They set up levels to avoid overload and at their peak would record straight to the record-cutting lathe via a mere couple of microphones with no recording console worth mentioning. The result was breathtakingly direct recordings like Count Basie with Frank Sinatra, which if you've never heard them on Vinyl with it's 70dB signal to noise ratio, well you haven't lived, my friends! "
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi...ml#post2948616
"I thought I'd elaborate on why the top sixties HiFi was better than most junk you buy today. But this is not for discussion. I will simply state 6 good reasons, and you can stuff them in your pipe and smoke them.
1) Engineers were older, had lived through WW2 and had a much broader background in Radio and antennas and high frequencies and would even make their own components like coils and oiled paper capacitors. They had far better mental arithmetic ability than most of you, and could use a Smith chart for matching impedance and a slide rule for calculation much faster than you can with computers:
2) I have no particular axe to grind on transistors versus valves, and in fact classic performers like the Radford STA25 had a single rail transistor preamplifier driving a valve output stage with a defined source impedance. But they were Class A designs with all the lovely cancellation of common-mode that makes them sound so good. The power supply for instance had only to drive a constant current and all electrolytic capacitors had the proper bias which keeps them linear.
3) Record pickups were wide bandwidth and low source inductance moving coil designs. These avoided trying to jump out of the groove due to LC resonances which plagued later moving magnet designs and LP crackle and pop was less obtrusive.
4) Bass speakers would often be 10" paper cones in huge solid closed boxes mounted literally as bookshelves against a wall. Tweeters would often be simple 3" paper cones with a single capacitor crossover. It didn't much matter how good the speaker surround was, because acoustic suspension essentially kept the speaker linear. Frequency response was probably not the last word, but rolled off gently. In fact the reputable WLM La Scala speakers rather recreate these babies.
5) Components like transistors were doubtless not as fast, but then feedback was kept much lower too, so gross distortions like slewing tended to be avoided in favour of gentle rolloff of frequency response.
6) Recording engineers really knew their equipment like the backs of their hands. They set up levels to avoid overload and at their peak would record straight to the record-cutting lathe via a mere couple of microphones with no recording console worth mentioning. The result was breathtakingly direct recordings like Count Basie with Frank Sinatra, which if you've never heard them on Vinyl with it's 70dB signal to noise ratio, well you haven't lived, my friends! "
