Amplifier at the bottom, when it's the only thing that generates significant heat? Plainly not an audiophile set-up. Should be on top, and the turntable should be off to one side on one of those vibration isolation decks. Kids these days, eh?
this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2025
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A setup like this had the feel of luxury and high tech. Not something every upper middle class household afforded, mostly audiophiles.
I was young and had a JVC stereo cassette player with radio. Attached a discman when the time came.
As I got older, I started building a Hifi system (Panasonic), but after amp and boxes, the digital era came. Bought a previous gen used tape player for my tapes and attached my 2nd and last discman, and that's where it's still at.
It's still as I left it. I kept my old tiny apartment as an office, with all that and other 80s & 90s tech in it, and visiting is like time travel. For the era, and my life. Should you ever visit, don't trip over the BNC cable in the hallway.
I just finished donating my Marantz with "digital tubes" to an archival library
80s were weird like that. Digital tubes are an oxymoron. Like saying you have a fuel injected carburetor engine or something
Everything in the manual and product guide described integrated circuits. But in the '70s, people either didn't know what ICs were or they thought those were only in computers and Atari cartridges. With a name and pedigree like Marantz, hearing that the warm dulcet sounds you always loved were now being coldly processed by transistors would have likely been too much.
I'm not that old, and we were in poverty growing up so didn't have anything even remotely like this.
But now that I'm older with a decent job, one of my favourite things I've bought for myself is a nice stereo system. It feels like such a nice luxury, especially when all my friends rely on tv speakers or Bluetooth speakers
And I took this personally.
Yes, yes, I am.
Is that a CD player? Yeah I’m older than that.
But this was a pretty common setup most households would have had around that time.
No RTR? Noobs
That’s still in my house. And if I have my way, it will outlive me.
Suicide hotline : dial 988
I loved to play with the equalizer to shape the sound (those sweet sweet bass frequencies). You feel magic when you can change the sound with one finger.
Playing with eq on a PC or any digital screen is not as fun.
Does anyone know what that stack would have cost new? I bet it would sound amazing though.
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I bought a similar set up from a thrift store not long ago, came with the cabinet and everything. $60. The speakers it came with with put my newer tv speakers to shame, and I started building a vinyl collection because of it
Wow, that is exactly the same tower I have.
My family had something similar to this. Cassettes were fancy and the radio was furniture.
Yeah it was a slightly weird transition going from big pieces of furniture to just like, a pair of Bluetooth speakers and nothing else.
At the time it felt like losing something, and as time goes by I'm more convinced that my feeling was correct. I reckon if I ever move out of an apartment building into a proper size house, I'll build myself a hifi stack and become one of them vinyl wankers.
Even now, that looks like a pretty badass system.
Yes… I’m that old
Shit, my folks still had their 8 track player when I was a kid, although I don't remember them using it much in favor of records instead
Stereo racks like this? This is childhood home stuff.
Me? When I moved on my own for university, all I had on audio front was a CD/cassette boombox.
And it never got better. Had 4.1 speakers for my computer at one point. Now, not even that.
~~(Side note: I swear, people who came up with HDMI don't know what they're doing. Ethernet? Who the hell asked for Ethernet? We have Ethernet cables for Ethernet. Anyway: in a sensible design, televisions/monitors would have HDMI Audio Out ports. Which you then could wire to your brand spanking new digital input based amplifier in a giant stereo rack. Or a D/A converter box that feeds your ancient amplifier. Do any TVs and monitors work that way? Of course not, we have janky audio output nonsense. New TVs and monitors don't necessarily even have headphone jacks. Why.)~~
(Edit: Apparently I was talking nonsense. I definitely should get my morning coffee now.)
TVs do have HDMI audio output. It's the ARC/eARC port, and you connect that to your AVR or soundbar.
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God damn that takes me back. My parents had a stack like that in the 90s. Bottom portion was all CDs and the top was a 5 CD changer, tape player/ recorder, radio unit, an amplifier, and these really dope floor speakers that to this day are hooked up to a record player at my uncles house. I remember walking into the living room as Welcome to the Machine was playing. I didn't know the song, of course because I would have been < 5, but I remember being amazed at all the different sounds going on. And then immediately screaming when the air raid siren goes off at the end.
The music of the time these were being made would have sounded incredible through them.
Well, we were living in the land of tornado sirens. Which, got tested once per week during the season. Every week once a week in the afternoon repurposed air raid sirens go off all over town. It was the end of the world to 3 year old me every time it happened. That air raid siren at the end of Welcome to The Machine put that same fear in me. Damn good speakers.
That and tower speakers in the 4 corners of the room were what we had for surround sound