741's and 458's are used in huge numbers of amplifiers and audio equipment, and perform their job perfectly well. In a properly designed circuit they aren't noisy, they aren't distorted, and the frequency response is ample.
I tried replacing the 741's in the front end of a mixer/amp using TL072's (or whichever is the single one?) - I only did two of the four channels and compared them at a gig. Fed from 600 ohm microphones you couldn't tell any difference between the different channels.
However, there seems little justification for buying 741's these days, you can get far better devices for less money.
Hi Nigel,
You were just lucky you got a lousy old 741 with noise and distortion less than the ambient at your gig because they don't even have a noise or distortion spec'.
Yes, you might as well use a low noise, very low distortion, wideband and cheap opamp designed for audio. :lol: