Technical editor Ketan Bharadia rues hi-fi’s growing infatuation with nostalgia
The High End Munich show has become the premier event for the hi-fi industry to show off its wares in Europe. This year it delivered the usual mix of the outlandish, the odd and the plain ordinary. Among the outrageously expensive systems and clever tech, it is quite clear that a significant chunk of the industry has embraced nostalgia.
We’re not just talking of the number of record players being used this far into the digital age, or the relatively common sight of a valve amplifier in full glow. Alongside all that, it now seems fashionable to throw away the modern hi-fi design book and replace it with the kind of design and engineering we’d have seen fifty years ago.
This was most obvious in the world of speakers where, after years of going slimmer and smaller, there’s now a glut of big, wide new models covered in the kind of wood finish your grandparents would find familiar. If it’s possible to revive a famous nameplate, so much the better. It’s as though the industry has decided the best way to move forward is to look back.
This was most obvious on the IAG stand where many of its brands (such as Mission, Audiolab, Wharfedale and others) showed products that were reinventions of past successes or new models that are clearly retro-themed. Mission not only displayed the excellent revived 770 speakers but also surprised us with resurrected 700s and a new version of the old 778 amplifier. Never heard of the 778? We’re not surprised; it was a short-lived design that is probably best known for setting the design template followed by the original One and Two integrated amps from Mission sub-brand, Cyrus. It’s as though any old product, almost regardless of impact, is deemed worthy enough to bring back to life.
Living in the past
But IAG didn’t get off the nostalgia boat there. It also introduced the compact Wharfedale Aston and rather larger, fridge-sized Dovedale. Both take names of past Wharfedale successes, despite being thoroughly modern when it comes to sonic engineering. The IAG retro-love-in continues with Castle’s unfashionably bulky Windsor standmounters with 6.5- and 8-inch mid/bass units, clad in the kind of veneer that screams 1970.
Fyne Audio, a speaker manufacturer barely old enough to be out of nursery, also revealed two new retro high-end speaker ranges, called Classic and Vintage. These start at around £3500 and go all the way to ten times that price; and, speaking to the company, both ranges racked up plenty o
