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Hi-fi Engine alternates

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rattlesnake

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Hi-fi Engine has a treasure of service manuals, but the administrator has shut off registration due to “abuse of the platform.” It’s too bad they did not turn it over to someone with the time and ability to administer it. A lot of people must have volunteered their service manuals, only to have them made inaccessible.

Does anyone know of alternatives?
 
It still works fine for me, FWIW.
There are other sites, but many are more or less sketchy.
audiokarma has some manuals & documents in their "Digital Docs" section.
There was once a nice collection of Pioneer, ads, and Tandberg (and other) documentation on a now-defunct site. Some of the docs might be available through archive.org -- see:

Wayback Machine

web.archive.org web.archive.org
EDIT: Perhaps a better way to look for the above-mentioned content:
 
Last edited:
Very sad what's happened to HiFi Engine and Vinyl Engine. Both of which I used regularly for manuals, especially service manuals. Elektrotanya is pretty good, but doesn't have the depth of HiFi manuals that HFE or VE had.

It's especially galling that there's no way of contacting the site admin for any information. I like others would be happy to pay a fee per manual, like I do with service-data.com for vintage radio and other early home entertainment manuals.

It's sadly not the first time I've heard of forums closing down due to abuse and/or site owners getting tired of running them.

S.
 
Yeah, frustratingly, I discovered my account on HE had been deleted without warning. And without the ability to log in, there was no way to contact the admin.

I now usually rely on Manualslib and Elektrotanya. Most of the time, I just Google the equipment model along with "service manual," but nine times out of ten, I end up downloading it from one of those two sites anyway.
 
Old_School_Brad said:
Yeah, frustratingly, I discovered my account on HE had been deleted without warning. And without the ability to log in, there was no way to contact the admin.

I now usually rely on Manualslib and Elektrotanya. Most of the time, I just Google the equipment model along with "service manual," but nine times out of ten, I end up downloading it from one of those two sites anyway.
Click to expand...
Same thing here. My account was deleted without warning and now no way to register or sign in again. Shame.
 
I think it might be your browser. Did you try cleaning your cache and logging in again. I can access it fine. I seem to remember people complaining about this a year ago as well, but I haven't had a loss of access (yet). It is a great resource, I haven't found anything with the same level of database. Vinylengine was the same too, some people were locked out for some reason. I never heard why it happened or if it was resolved.
 
As far as I know, both HFE and VE closed all dormant accounts, i.e. all those that hadn't contributed manuals or to the Forum. Only those active on the forum, or regular contributors to the manuals library can still log in.

In my case, although I was a regular user of the manuals library, and read the forums, I didn't contribute to either, so got my account closed.

Fair in a way, but sadly there was no warning, and no opportunity to become a paying member, which I would have been happy to do.

S.
 
sergeauckland said:
As far as I know, both HFE and VE closed all dormant accounts, i.e. all those that hadn't contributed manuals or to the Forum. Only those active on the forum, or regular contributors to the manuals library can still log in.

In my case, although I was a regular user of the manuals library, and read the forums, I didn't contribute to either, so got my account closed.

Fair in a way, but sadly there was no warning, and no opportunity to become a paying member, which I would have been happy to do.

S.
Click to expand...
Hmm....I've only used HFE to research and sometimes download a manual, but don't think I ever posted in the HFE forum (VE maybe two or three times I used the forum but a long time ago). No deleted account....yet.
 
Depending on what one is looking for, another decent source for user manuals, service manuals and brochures/catalogues can be what used to be Lulabu's archive (in the meantime managed by somebody else, afaik): https://www.hifi-archiv.info/

And then there also used to be Vintages Hifi, a now defunct site, which however can still be accessed via archive.org - and the most recent index page for which should be this one: https://web.archive.org/web/20220811171714/https://www.vintageshifi.com/m800.php

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini
 
sergeauckland said:
As far as I know, both HFE and VE closed all dormant accounts, i.e. all those that hadn't contributed manuals or to the Forum. Only those active on the forum, or regular contributors to the manuals library can still log in.

In my case, although I was a regular user of the manuals library, and read the forums, I didn't contribute to either, so got my account closed.

Fair in a way, but sadly there was no warning, and no opportunity to become a paying member, which I would have been happy to do.

S.
Click to expand...
Not true. I have had dozens of posts on both, the retarded admin first deleted my account on Hifiengine two years ago and banned O2 Slovakia and Czech Republic from logging to Vinylengine. Reading mode only. I have written an email to him via another operator, he replied they don't have many contributors from Slovakia and ghosted me like teen girl on a dating site afterwards....
Today I found that POS completely banned ANY access, not even a reading mode, to all our operators to both sites. I have no polite words left. More than fifty contributions locked out. May he rott alive, an a hole.
 
Not necessarily exactly like Hi-fi engine but I've seen a guy post on Facebook the other day about a new site that also offers specs and manuals for hi-fi products. it's mostly more modern products but there is definitely quite a lot, it says over 5k products. The manuals are easily downloadable without an account and I assume as it's a new site the number of products will likely increase over time. Definitely worth checking out!
www.linephaze.com
 
I mentioned it in a very specific context earlier in this thread, but it may be worth reiterating: archive.org is getting to have a pretty rich collection of audio ephemera (of the documentation kind, that is). Not always easy to sort through, but worth checking when in search of something.
 
Yes Archive.org is great if the only goal is to find manuals but in terms of user experience and if you want to see specifications and other things, it's not the best place. Also sometimes it's tough to actually find the product. That's why I quite like this Linephaze site as it has specifications and manuals, I think they also have spare parts for some of the products and the user experience is pretty nice. It just needs to extend a bit the number of products to have older and more niche models. Hopefully they will do that as they develop
 
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