Yeah, that’s a preamp. Just a preamp. Audio legend Bob Carver created the C-4000 back in 1979, when preamps were often judged by button/knob count. So what do all those controls do? There are separate bass and treble controls for left and right channels, plus all sorts of exotic, proprietary controls such as Time Delay Echo Density, Peak Unlimiter, and Correlation Threshold, some related to Carver’s Sonic Holography crosstalk cancellation technology. It also has line outputs for time-delayed left, center, and right channels. When I recently visited Carver’s test lab, I noticed he still has a C-4000 in his equipment rack.
There are so many great products from the past that either perform better, look better, or do both better than their current counterparts. You don't even have to even make subjective comparisons to arrive to this conclusion, either. The attention to detail many of the engineers had was outstanding.
The importance is that both modern designers and consumers should make comparisons between past and present to decide both how to design (what to focus) and what to buy (between 2nd hand in good condition or new).
The audio oscilloscope on the Marantz 2150 Tuner was for observing and correcting multipath in the FM Signal. By rotating your antenna (you did have a yagi antenna on a rotator, didn't you?) you would see the multipath change on the display. If you were in a metropollitan area with many high buildings, sometimes the best signal was a reflection off of a building. The scope gave you a visual indication of the strength of the multipath (noise) and allowed you an weasy way to minimize it. Also available in that time period was the Technics SH-3433, a standalone scope that provided FM Multipath viewing as well as 4 channel audio viewing.
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There are so many great products from the past that either perform better, look better, or do both better than their current counterparts. You don't even have to even make subjective comparisons to arrive to this conclusion, either. The attention to detail many of the engineers had was outstanding.
The importance is that both modern designers and consumers should make comparisons between past and present to decide both how to design (what to focus) and what to buy (between 2nd hand in good condition or new).
The audio oscilloscope on the Marantz 2150 Tuner was for observing and correcting multipath in the FM Signal. By rotating your antenna (you did have a yagi antenna on a rotator, didn't you?) you would see the multipath change on the display. If you were in a metropollitan area with many high buildings, sometimes the best signal was a reflection off of a building. The scope gave you a visual indication of the strength of the multipath (noise) and allowed you an weasy way to minimize it. Also available in that time period was the Technics SH-3433, a standalone scope that provided FM Multipath viewing as well as 4 channel audio viewing.