Stereo setup for music

You may easily get a pre-owned Marantz PM6004/6005 under Rs15000-Rs18000 or you may go for a very decent vintage amp/receiver which is a much higher value for money. Nowadays, a beautiful fully restored vintage amps costs about as low as Rs16000-Rs20000. It's definitely worth looking at it, especially if you are quite handy with electrical tools and so many free resources are out there which helps you troubleshoot them in case there's a need to repair, unlike the new models.
I myself bought a few (even sold for higher value) over the past two years both locally and internationally and finds them much more worth the money.

I am constantly looking out the forum for pre owned equipment, so far nothing has come up that I need. I missed some vintage ones just before I had started to look out for a music system :D
 
@ benz

Have you ever tried searching on eBay?
You can find a number of bargain deals on vintage units from US and across Europe...just be aware of the voltage(120 vs 240).Some of them are even universal voltage with voltage selectors. So it's just a matter of switching the voltage selector!

Do you have a brand of choice?
It seems you are more of a Marantz person!

My first starter hifi unit was a Marantz too...PM6004.
I still keep it, as it's a rare breed nowadays....Made In Japan:)
Most of the PM6004 and all of PM6005 are now Made in China!
Now, Marantz only makes their higher end models in Japan.
PM6004 is good for a moderately efficient 6 ohm nom and above speakers playing in small room. I pair it with Dali Lektor2s with modified crossovers.
Comparing with my other vintage units PM6004 feels like more analytical.
On the other hand, Yamaha feels more smoother in presentation and wider soundstage than Marantz in general. Marantz has a strong presence in midrange, especially mid bass.
So it's a personal choice between two.

As far as amplifier power is concerned, more the merrier!
There's nothing called enough amp power for a speaker...Music is dynamic and speakers are generally very inefficient by design and impedance changes with frequency too.
So an amp must have a very well designed power supply amp section to properly drive and control the speaker and it's ever changing impedance
to produce music effortlessly.
This is one great thing about a lot of vintage amps. They have a very good robust power supply section.
We can see these kind of carefully designed and excecuted power supply nowadays only with higher end models across all manufacturers.
 
Last edited:
I never saw this until you posted here. I could not find much reviews also about it and without a demo of it I don't know if I should go for it.

Have you heard it somewhere ?
I have a similar Denon mini system, a CD receiver UDM30. Bought it in Singapore about 15 years ago. My daughter interfaces it via cable to her Mac and listens to MP3 music all day long.

Excellent value for money and great for a medium sized room. Good bass. Hers is about 170 sq ft. Even today it plays well, touch wood.
 
Does this page help? There may not be anything fundamentally new there which hasn't been suggested by FMs already, but I'm passing it on just in case...

I have found that there are two very different styles of listening to music -- the geek setup, usually driven by a laptop or RPi or some such thing, and the purist setup with a CD player/analog source and no computer in sight. Which approach do you fall into?
 
Does this page help? There may not be anything fundamentally new there which hasn't been suggested by FMs already, but I'm passing it on just in case...

I have found that there are two very different styles of listening to music -- the geek setup, usually driven by a laptop or RPi or some such thing, and the purist setup with a CD player/analog source and no computer in sight. Which approach do you fall into?

Excellent blog "tcpip"
Many first time buyers will benefit from this information.
Cheers,
Raghu
 
Get the Wharfedale EVO 4.2 3-Way Standmount Speakers at a Special Offer Price.
Back
Top