I was 4 years old, listening to a record on headphones connected to this rig. Leaned too far back, and caught the 1/4 inch input jack on the headphones right in my fucking eyeball.
Cd player? Oh you sweet summer child
this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2025
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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.
Old? Buddy not only did I have an RCA system like that with surround sound as a kid, I have a Technics one in my living room now that I literally found on the side of the road. Full cabinet system with the floor speakers and everything. Radio tuner, cassette player, 6 disk CD player, phono preamp for my record player as well. I use it instead of a shitty sound bar or the tv speakers because it was free and sounds loads better.
Still use my stereo system, obviously upgraded from that cheap plastic rca junk but still. I've never not had a stereo system. Funny how it was the norm, now its rare for any human to have ever heard music not on shitty earbuds. Makes me sad. And explains why popular music sounds horrible. No one's ever listened to it on an actual home system.
*im talking about the population spoon fed corpo pop that most people (usually young) listen to. There is amazing music being made today but it actually takes effort to find now.
Those all-in-one audio systems were fantastic, I will not hear any more of this slander
They are*, plenty of them still around and pretty much all of them superior to soundbars.
Soundbars are cute, but they are form over function. You just cannot expect good sound out of cheap single-driver applications where the tiny amplifier, power supply and electronics are all shoved into the same package with no regard for anything but keeping it slim. They need a separate subwoofer at a minimum.
Most people dont seem to own a stereo anymore. I know so few people who have anything more than an amazon echo or something similar. Sound quality is impressive for the size, but not at all good. They all use the same cheap 2" single speaker that has to produce high and low frequencies at the same time, so the sound is always muddy.
If you get an inexpensive (and tiny) class d amplifier from Fosi and a modest pair of bookshelf speakers, the sound is far better than smart speakers that cost 5x the price.
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Wow, that is exactly the same tower I have.
I was likely in uni when this came out. I am cassette, 8-track and LP old. The CD came out when I was in uni. I remember having to decide whether to get a Betamax or VHS tape player when they came out.
well, which did you go with?? you can't leave us hanging!
VHS
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Even now, that looks like a pretty badass system.
I had a victrola. My grandma raised me.
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?
Why do you need to hit me like this... Right now i'm fixing my dad's old telefunken hifi. I'm a lot younger than that generation. But my first taste of music was on that motherfucker with old cassettes and radio...
Fuck how am i nostalgic of a time i only saw the aftermath of?
Don't worry. I feel about 40 years older than I am because I didn't follow trends, preferred old tech, and am a cheap ass. I can talk to a 70 year old like I was their buddy in high school hahah
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'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
These things may be old, but they still have their uses today.
I still have a used, fairly high-quality audio system from the late 90s, i.e. an amplifier with good speakers, which is connected to my computer – a Bluetooth receiver for my cell phone is also connected (as well as a mixer and preamplifier for a record player).
I highly recommend it: great sound quality for little money.
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.
Yes… I’m that old
That EQ is worth its weight in gold.
And I would literally kill somebody for that record player and by literally killing I mean figuratively so not really at all.