I am glad to know that Spec system uses power amp to power the headphone port. I think I will go after them in the future. If we only speak using receiver (or integrate amp) to drive headphone. As people said in the early thread , the vintage stuff put a resister between headphone port and speaker output, modern stuff utilizes a independent headphone output. That why vintage stuff has enough juice to power up almost any headphones. If we talk about drive speaker also, I think modern stuff over $1000 will do good job also (sorry, I didn't own much those high price tag stuff, but based on information online). But think about this, the price of Pioneer Sx-1250 in 1977 is around $900, and I saw Rshack had receiver for $70. If we transfer the 1977 dollar to today's, the pioneer sx-1250 is over $3000 tag. So basically, Pioneer sx-1250 is a very high-end audio equipment in 1977. If we compare over $2000 modern stuff to sx-1250, I think modern stuff might win (even though it doesn't have the look and touch to us). So I would say comparing $600 vintage stuff to $600 modern stuff today is not fair. $600 vintage stuff should at least compare to $1200 modern stuff.
Yes, I was talking about Samsung audio stuff, I went to worstbuy and checked a1000 wpc Samsung receiver, it only weights around 20lb. I just don't know how company can rate it 1000wpc. Yes, modern high quality stuff has robust transformer, and the good vintage stuff we talk here normally has good transformer. I think discrete design just make stuff easier to fix. Technology of audio stuff improves over time, MOSFET is the biggest advance. But if the modern headphone port design doesn't back to using the speaker output power as vintage stuff, I will stay with my old ones.
