You’ll notice that, thus far, I’ve not dwelt on the contribution of the CH Precision 10 Series amps. That’s not in any way to belittle what they bring to the final result, but this is a discussion of musical coherence and that’s one quality that’s not hard to find in any number of amplifiers. In fact, just recently, we have reviewed a range of genuinely affordable integrated amps from the Konus Audio integrale 2000 to the Heed Lagrange, the Neodio TMA to the Trilogy 921. Any one of these is capable of sitting at the heart of a seriously entertaining and satisfying audio system. Likewise, there are any number of affordable, two-way loudspeakers that are capable of delivering the musical goods. The Living Voice Auditorium R25 is perhaps the perfect example, while the Vienna Acoustics Haydn or Neodio Lilli offer smaller alternatives. There are plenty of options at lower prices still. It seems like the old adage that, the more budget you give a speaker designer, the more scope you give him to screw it up, is as pertinent today as it ever was, to the extent that the Dali Kupid, a two-way stand-mount speaker that costs just €289, is a surprisingly respectable (and musically engaging) performer!
Perhaps it’s time to take a look at the lessons of history and budget systems of years past.
One of the major challenges facing the audio industry today is its failure to attract new, younger customers. There are many reasons for that, but one is the failure to deliver compelling musical results at affordable prices. Leaving aside issues of relative cost, inflation, shrinkflation and changes in disposable income, where are today’s starter systems? All too often they carry a WiiM or Sonos badge! At a time when – in theory at least – musical access has never been easier or more wide-reaching, as an industry, what we are actually failing to deliver is music. But it wasn’t always this way…
Jump in the audio industry Delorean (ICE install courtesy of Focal, naturally) and wind the clock back to 1980 and visit the UK, open a hi-fi mag (there were plenty to choose from) and check out the starter system: I say “the” starter system because there really was only one. The Dual 505-1 turntable was paired with the NAD 3020 amplifier and a pair of AR18 loudspeakers. Speaker cable was QED 79 strand and cartridge was likely to be the included Ortofon or a Nagaoka MP11. Those of a non-conformist bent might opt for RS-56 speaker cable, maybe a different cartridge, or speakers from Castle, KEF or Mission (the notorious 700), but those changes barely impacted the basic recipe: a belt-drive, semi-automatic turntable with a MM cartridge, a relatively load tolerant amplifier and a simple two-way stand-mount speaker. And it worked. It worked spectacularly well – both as a source of musical entertainment and as a platform for future upgrades. So much so that Popular Hi-Fi ran a double-page spread every month, detailing the step-by-step upgrade path from the Dual/NAD/AR launch pad to the Nirvana that was the LP12/Ittok/ASAK – Naim 32/SNAPS/250 – Isobarik system. And as bizarre and prescriptive as it sounds (and was) it did actually work, delivering highly enjoyable musical results for many a customer, a highly profitable enterprise for many a dealer.
