Hi Fi or Not?

Possibly of interest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePhnQzOLLps&ab_channel=Thomas%26Stereo
https://youtu.be/NlBDj3Bw2sU

top marantz pieces like the ki/ruby series are excellent, make no apologies to upper tier of ’affordable’ brands like primare, belles, naim, rogue, parasound, ps audio - of course their run of mill line is just that... only caveat with marantz is their cd players, even top line ones, have a problem with premature failing lasers... so be careful with those (or buy a spare laser assembly when the piece is current...)

yamahas to me are good not great, their voicing can vary considerably piece to piece - better than mid-fi, but not as good sounding as the one mentioned above... imho and experience

I had a full Yamaha system in the early 80’s with Infinity tower speakers. It was very unmusical and hard sounding.  However, a good friend of mine loved it and I sold it to him at 1/2 of what I paid. He still uses it to this day and it still sounds very unmusical to me. 
Marantz in the 70’s was bought by Superscope and was decent, but I always thought the Kenwood that we sold was much better. 

@stereo5 I sold Kenwood also, but regardless of how it sounded, people just didn’t like the looks of their stuff and they didn’t advertise like Marantz and others did. Always sat on the shelf. Hitachi had some great sounding Class G stuff, but they couldn’t compete. Thanks for reminding me it was Superscope. 

i fondly remember the kenwood kd500 concrete plinth tt... mine had a lovely infinity black widow arm, and a sonus blue cart... what a sweet front end

also i had the L07C pre and L07M mono blocks... lovely gear that sound so clean and precise - had ohm f's back then ... quite a system, spectacular sound stages