We had this in my house growing up
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There was always that one family in the neighborhood.
That was my dad, sorry. He was 100% the crabass who had the system and never let anybody touch it, and, worst of all, barely ever used it himself. It was just as fun being his daughter as it sounds. Plbbbt!
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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.
My dad had a set-up like this because my mom and him used to be DJs. I was forbidden to touch it but, in the 90s, when we had cassette players and CD players as part of a separate cabinet, those were hard to mess up.
So, as a compromise, my dad showed me how to power up all of the amps and receivers to get the cassette or CD player working. At the time we had a massive subwoofer next to our CRT TV and, when the subwoofer magnet messed with the TV coloring, my dad blamed it on our Sega Genesis instead of the sub.
Good times.
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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.
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.
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Not to mention that the advent of touchscreens on literally everything makes accessibility a lot harder for a lot of people.
Apple used to sell all this shit as accessible. Now it’s barely an afterthought. Pisses me off.
Then I forked an app, to fix the text so I could read it and added a bunch of additional accessibility features and settings. Apple’s App Store rejected the submission under the grounds that it was “spam” I.e. too similar to an existing app.
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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.
wrote last edited by [email protected]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.)
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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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At least $1000 to get properly started back in the day, although usually family that could afford these would not have purchased it all at once. Modules were added later in a couple of cases that I knew.
In 2025 money, that's like $5000-ish to fill the cabinet.
It's either 5000 dollars or 20 bucks because estate sales just want the fuckers gone.
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TVs do have HDMI audio output. It's the ARC/eARC port, and you connect that to your AVR or soundbar.
...Thanks for the clarification. Oh cool, all I got in my instructions was "here's our crappy set-top box, you should plug it in the 'ARC' thing if you have one." Does this set-top box have output options? Well it's a crappy set-top box, what do you think. *sigh* One more reason I'm canceling that service the moment the contract allows.
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That was my dad, sorry. He was 100% the crabass who had the system and never let anybody touch it, and, worst of all, barely ever used it himself. It was just as fun being his daughter as it sounds. Plbbbt!
Lol, this comment at least makes up for it some
Also, i love the aesthetic of these old stereos. Kinda makes me want to hunt one down now. Of course with my luck the market is probably hot for them these days so it's probably not as cheap as it would have been 10-15 years ago and given the age there's a chance they'll need some TLC to get them working properly again... Then i would probably plug my phone in through the Aux and just end up using it that way like 90% of the time if I'm being real, lol
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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.
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
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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.
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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.
You call that old? It's got one of those fancy, new-fangled CD players! Not old at all.
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...Thanks for the clarification. Oh cool, all I got in my instructions was "here's our crappy set-top box, you should plug it in the 'ARC' thing if you have one." Does this set-top box have output options? Well it's a crappy set-top box, what do you think. *sigh* One more reason I'm canceling that service the moment the contract allows.
Yeah, I'm not sure why they'd tell you to plug a set top box into that.
It works as an input too, but if you run something like Netflix from the TV app, that's where the audio output from it goes.
Personally I run it all into the AVR, and from there to the TV, because I've got an older ARC set. ARC was limited to older DVD-era audio formats like stereo PCM, DTS 5.1 and Dolby Digital 5.1 (with the limited Atmos support). More modern sets have eARC which supports all the fancier Blu-ray-era formats, DTS-MA, Dolby TrueHD & Atmos, and 7.1 PCM. All the major streaming services use the older formats though, so most people won't notice any difference.
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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.
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.
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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.
That and tower speakers in the 4 corners of the room were what we had for surround sound
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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.
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?
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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.
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?
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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.
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
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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.
I'm slightly younger so all of that would have been black plastic instead of brushed steel.
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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.
Even older, huzzah!
