Why Do Old Technologies Persist in Audio?

[Trell]

You are bewildering.
Outside the hifi world, a lot of folks love the old technology.
Cars, moto, furniture, plane...
TAD, jbl vintage, tannoy... If you think the new technology make a big difference, you are wrong.

This is why Apple is such a small company with a tiny user base while making next to no profit.

 

[617]

People get into this hobby lusting after stuff they can't afford. For example, if you were 17 years old in the late 90s, you would have lusted after, I don't know, Wilson Speakers, some big class A amps, and some super fancy SACD player.

As you get older, the SOTA changes, and the new stuff is even more expensive, but you still want what you wanted when you were young, and hopefully the prices have come down somewhat, unless collectors have gotten into them.

To this day I'd like to own some big Dunlavy, Thiel or Acoustat speakers, but are they state of the art? Not really, nor are they a good value, but I'd still like to own them.

I might also add that a lot of the old equipment functions as status symbols far better than modern stuff. A hypex amp in a box will never be as impressive as a Krell or Pass Labs, even if it is more performant. Same thing with most active studio speakers.

 

[Frgirard]

Back in the 60's we all spun vinyl and used tube electronics because that's what was available. Solid state electronics and digital audio came along. We are now in yet another era with switching power supplies, Class D amplification, and the move away from CD's to downloads and streaming.

Somehow the old technologies persist. I can sort of see with vinyl there is the ritual of handling the media. The rest of it is bewildering.

When the price of the cd is inferior to the download, I buy CD.
For the streaming only on Bandcamp, I don't want paid for the boule sheet music.

 

[Frgirard]

This is why Apple is such a small company with a tiny user base while making next to no profit.

What are you telling ? What is Apple doing? By the way, I am an Apple shareholder to extend the irrelevant point.

 

[fredstuhl]

I -- ahem -- think it's a perfect analogy... especially if the difference between Bosendorfer and synthesizer cannot be quantified.


FWIW, I like 'em too.

Why should this not be quantifiable

 

[Trell]

People get into this hobby lusting after stuff they can't afford. For example, if you were 17 years old in the late 90s, you would have lusted after, I don't know, Wilson Speakers, some big class A amps, and some super fancy SACD player.

As you get older, the SOTA changes, and the new stuff is even more expensive, but you still want what you wanted when you were young, and hopefully the prices have come down somewhat, unless collectors have gotten into them.

To this day I'd like to own some big Dunlavy, Thiel or Acoustat speakers, but are they state of the art? Not really, nor are they a good value, but I'd still like to own them.

I might also add that a lot of the old equipment functions as status symbols far better than modern stuff. A hypex amp in a box will never be as impressive as a Krell or Pass Labs, even if it is more performant. Same thing with most active studio speakers.

Adjusted for inflation for what I bought as a teenager, I today could assemble a 2.0 setup with far better performance for the same outlay. We are much closer to transparent audio for cheap than when I was a teenager, and add to that availability of hardware as well as content that has increased so very much.

Too bad that music that is recorded/mixed/mastered excellently is banished to a few genres (like classical), never mind multi channel.

 

[blueone]

I -- ahem -- think it's a perfect analogy... especially if the difference between Bosendorfer and synthesizer cannot be quantified.

The audible difference between a Bosendofer and a synthesizer is so great that the it must be easily quantifiable.

 

[Trell]

What are you telling ? What is Apple doing? By the way, I am an Apple shareholder to extend the irrelevant point.

You mean your point

 

[Prana Ferox]

Only a subset of music consumers believe "closest to the musicians' and producers' intent" to be the 'best' way to enjoy music.

 

[bluefuzz]

The rest of it is bewildering.

Why do people tinker with vintage cars, motorcycles or æroplanes? Why do they hang oil paintings on their walls or furnish their houses with mid-century modernist sofas, shaker tables or regency armoires? Or take pictures with film cameras, write with a fountain pen and grow their own vegetables while wearing loon pants and kaftans?

It's not just nostalgia. There is still much intrinsic value in old, obsolete or outmoded tech, fashions and cultural artifacts. They can be a way to understand the world and how we got here from there. It's also a way of appreciating when new technology is truly an improvement on the old or just a new way for the elites to exploit the masses.

While I'm happy that I don't have to turn over the vinyl record every 20 minutes any more or wait for the valves to warm up in the amp, I can appreciate why a young person may want to experience these 'pleasures' for themselves ...

 

[Trell]

Only a subset of music consumers believe "closest to the musicians' and producers' intent" to be the 'best' way to enjoy music.

From set theory you are correct though you fail to say how big/small that subset is, and why we should care.

As for close to musicians there is this very much enjoyable recording (multi-channel) from the Norwegian recording label 2L:

Marianne Thorsen & TrondheimSolistene: MOZART Violin Concertos (2L-038) MQA remix 2016

This album from 2L was declared a Record to Die For by Stereophile Magazine and won the Spellemann-prize as Best Classical Album when it was first released in 2006. In only a decade this recording with Marianne Thorsen and TrondheimSolistene has manifested as a classic audiophile reference, the...

www.2l.no

 

[bluefuzz]

No synthesizer sounds anywhere near as good as a Bosendorfer grand piano

However, a good synthesized grand piano is infinitely preferable to a recording of a Bösendorfer ...

 

[bloodshoteyed]

I -- ahem -- think it's a perfect analogy... especially if the difference between Bosendorfer and synthesizer cannot be quantified.


FWIW, I like 'em too.

i, too, admit to fetishizing paper & silk

 

[mhardy6647]

You are bewildering.
Outside the hifi world, a lot of folks love the old technology.
Cars, moto, furniture, plane...
TAD, jbl vintage, tannoy... If you think the new technology make a big difference, you are wrong.

Well, TAD isn't exactly what I think of as vintage -- certainly not JBL/Altec vintage (Fukuin/Pioneer dates back to the late 1950s) -- but, yeah.

That said, there's no doubt that anyone who, say, aspires to collect 1960s US muscle cars does know that they are inferior in every respect to their modern reboots (comfort, handling, performance, economy, 'green'-ness, and safety). Every respect... except cachet.

 

[mhardy6647]

Why should this not be quantifiable

It should be, if that is indeed the case. That's pretty much ASR's raison d'être. Feel free to point me to examples that objectively and quantitatively demonstrate the superiority of the real thing to the sampled facsimile. In all seriousness, such data may exist; I dunno.

 

[blueone]

However, a good synthesized grand piano is infinitely preferable to a recording of a Bösendorfer ...

I guess we're really going to have to agree to disagree, because this seems like lunacy to me.

 

[Ken1951]

I sold off my LPs quite a while ago as I didn't want to store them or display them or get up every 20 minutes or deal with a TT. Had tubes off and on in the mid-70s and not interested in dealing with them anymore either. My current speakers are far better than most anything I heard back then as well. I understand folks who want to use all of that equipment still, but it's not for me.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

For the same reason some people are going to want to continue to own their own vehicles when we develop autonomous, rapidly re-chargeable all electric vehicles. Even though they could meet all their transportation needs every bit as well, if not better, with shared vehicles (and reduce traffic and pollution and parking issues as well), some will still opt for their "very own" vehicle. For those people, a world where they own nothing and like it is beyond their ability to envision.

 

[Trell]

For the same reason some people are going to want to continue to own their own vehicles when we develop autonomous, rapidly re-chargeable all electric vehicles. Even though they could meet all their transportation needs every bit as well, if not better, with shared vehicles (and reduce traffic and pollution and parking issues as well), some will still opt for their "very own" vehicle. For those people, a world where they own nothing and like it is beyond their ability to envision.

Some people rather spend 2 hour in a car queue that take public transportation taking 30 minutes.

 

[levimax]

Well, TAD isn't exactly what I think of as vintage -- certainly not JBL/Altec vintage (Fukuin/Pioneer dates back to the late 1950s) -- but, yeah.

That said, there's no doubt that anyone who, say, aspires to collect 1960s US muscle cars does know that they are inferior in every respect to their modern reboots (comfort, handling, performance, economy, 'green'-ness, and safety). Every respect... except cachet.

old cars are louder