We Can Make Classic Cars Outperform Today's "SuperCars": Why Not Vintage Audio?
If you spent $2M on a modern "Supercar", you’d arrive at the end of a quarter mile 2 football fields behind the quickest highly-modified "street legal" cars from the muscle car era. You could show up at an Autocross event in your late model "track ready" sports sedan, and be embarrassed by a lady pushing a 1986 Monte Carlo between the cones.
There’s a lot of resources and talent in the automotive aftermarket. Many of the brightest minds earned weekly paychecks in their "past lives" at major auto manufacturers. There are various disciplines involved including complete engine and drive train replacements, serious add-on/mods to existing components, bigger/better brakes, track-ready suspensions, etc. They can even slide a complete new high-performance rolling chassis underneath popular models.
So, why not vintage audio? Well, we do dip our toes into this a bit. There are popular speaker crossover replacements for the DYI crowd. But, these fall sonically short of their contemporary "high end" counterparts. The automotive equivalent of replacing a 2 BBL carb on a cast iron manifold with a 4 BBL carb on a cast iron manifold -- while keeping the original single exhaust system intact. We can do simple mods to improve the sonics -- like upgrading an original power cord that you wouldn’t want to use on a 2-splice toaster, much less a high-current amplifier. The really smart guys need to come to the rescue for true audiophile grade solutions.
Understandably there has to be a "high give a s--- factor" related to this. The speed parts industry is fueled by a wildly enthusiastic crowd while vintage audio owners are, like: "whatever". So, the chances of a superb $5k amp/preamp module that drops into a Marantz 1060 chassis and slays any modern gear near it’s price point may not be coming to a town near you anytime soon.
I think this can be incremental if we put our minds and wallets to it. You "car guys" know there are 3 basic types of collector cars. "Showroom stock" represents as close as possible the vehicle as it rolled off the assembly line. "Personalized" generally follows a stock appearance with performance and cosmetic improvements. Generally speaking, the car can be reverted to showroom stock at some point the future. All the original parts are carefully cataloged and placed in safe storage. "Modified" has the appearance of a race car, and performs like one. Often modifications to metal are performed, and in some cases there’s no going back. We can follow similar guidelines as well. We understand the motivation to keep things "stock". We can also understand the audiophiles that love their vintage gear would be open to the concept of a significantly better listening experience while maintaining a stock appearance and functionality. Chopping up an Auburn is a really bad idea. But, upgrading the input terminals on an integrated amplifier may be highly palatable for those cherished collectables.
I also get it that the ROI would be questionable. An amp that has a current market value of $2k with $5k worth of mods might still be worth $2k -- or less.
What say you?
@waytoomuchstuff - Don’t get me wrong, I would take a Lola chassis mascarading as a 60’s Ford GT40. But it is not like they have figured out how to make cars a whole lot lighter, and while some improvements in braking materials have happened… the physics of the cars is largely unchanged. And in HiFi electronics it is somewhat more easy, as there is no skill that needs to harness the equipment. One pretty much cables it up, and it is ready to go. It is not like amp only needs to do a 1/4 or 1/8th mile. They need enough power to drive the speakers, and more than that is not going to make the stereo better. Once it is too loud to listen to, then it is loud enough. The aftermarket stuff is relegated to power conditioning, cables, and on the terms of things that work there are also room treatments and DSP approaches. I am putting the cables and power conditioners into the fuzzy dice category, where they look cool, but do not make the things perform better most of the time. |
"In no way can older cars compete with the newer "super" cars. Same, I say, with audio although the difference in this realm is not as great as in the automotive." You are correct, sir. My comments relate only to the (measurable) performance improvements in aftermarket add-ons/mods, not so much vehicles in their raw, factory trim. My use of "Supercars" is simply to set a caliper for comparison, and not inteneded to diminish the crediblity of that class of vehicles. Nice reference to audio in your statement. I have to agree with you on that one, too.
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@ketchup Yep, Tom's Camaro is brutal. A little story: A stock-appearing early Nova showed up at our local track (St. Louis area). 2-tone, white over black, baby moons. Everything fit under the factory wheel wells. The car was so cute you just wanted to walk over and pinch it. It quietly made it's way thru the staging lanes and into the burnout box. I was thinking that he was there making a tribute to the car -- to have documentation that he actually took it to the drag strip to hang on the wall. The light turned green, and he launched it. 8.60s at 160 MPH. The moral of the story here is that "Bugatti performance" can be had with something that looks more like a grocery-getter than a race car with the right engineering and aftermarket parts. Twin turbos help, too. Thanks for the comments. |
If one has a Marantz model 7 preamp, 8B amp and 10B tuner, you do not even think about "modding" it. Same with Mac. The car comparison for audio-no bueno. Classic GM car 1/4 time slip vs Euro exotica. The Camaro against it will fail on a road course. So what? Remember the Carver amp challenge? The Carver Challenge | Stereophile.com
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