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Comment by jnwatson | Hacker News Reader

I've been dabbling in Hifi for most of my life, a hobby inherited from my father. I have some awareness of consumer Hifi over the last 50 years.

Speaker and amplifier design are vastly better than even 15 years ago, partially because of better engineering and mostly because of advances in electronics. An entry level receiver today would wipe the floor with consumer level equipment from the 80s.

Still, traditional Hifi is dying to the "crap tiny speaker" folks. The company that owns Denon and Marantz may go out business this year.

It is ironic because traditional Hifi is in an amazing place in terms of value. I recently bought a budget (<$300) setup for my PC and I'm blown away by what a couple of modest bookshelf speakers, a modern mini-amp and a compact subwoofer can accomplish.

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> Still, traditional Hifi is dying to the "crap tiny speaker" folks.

I wonder if it also ties into living situations and customers that are in a separate house.

With my apartment-situation, I'm always using a headset (or bluetooth headphones.) Perhaps not crap tiny speakers, but not so big that making them good takes as much effort.

> The company that owns Denon and Marantz may go out business this year.

Oh man. I guess I better stock up on the latest Marantz before the go out of business. The last one I had was my dad's and it lasted 50 years. Actually, it still works, it just requires you to manually power it on.

> Speaker and amplifier design are vastly better than even 15 years ago

Let's break this down into the components:

Speaker drivers: very little change

Speaker chassis design: still changing, last major change was improved computational modeling

Amplifier: Class D was the last major change, not much since

DSP: Still evolving, getting better every day

AV Receiver control boards: Standards are changing every day, whether that's new HDMI standards, new bluetooth versions, or new AirPlay/Chromecast protocols.

TL;DR: Buy old speakers and a new receiver/amp.

Or buy a great, "dumb" amp and a modern Streamer (e.g. Wiim) as the best way to minimise waste when standards inevitably evolve.

Needing cables between a "streamer" box and my amp, and then cables from the amp to the speaker(s) already makes it a whole different category of gadget from Sonos. The key thing Sonos sells is the single power cable setup. Wiim does sell an amp model that removes one of the steps. That's probably the one I'd go for if I accepted speaker cables. Less waste reduction BUT at least you don't have the separate amp volume knob and power switch to worry about.

Newer receivers are often built in a modular way, allowing you to swap out the "smart" part of the board later on.

Can you recommend a modern mini amp?

I'm a fan of SMSL products https://www.smsl-audio.com/

My desk setup is their AD-18 driving L/R bookshelf speakers and a compact subwoofer via its dedicated sub output. I love all the input options including traditional analog, toslink, BT/NFC, USB for high-res: https://www.smsl-audio.com/portal/product/detail/id/566.html

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