For the same reason some people are going to continue to own electric vehicles instead of taking public transport or the train....
I suppose you rent your hifi installation.
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Why Do Old Technologies Persist in Audio?
- Thread starter Ron Texas
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I suppose you rent your hifi installation.
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Why doesn't everyone in the country drive the latest cars? Why do some people still love old cars? Old technology watches? Etc.
Why buy a book when you can read it on an iPad or Kindle?
Because there are some conceptual, aesthetic and tangible qualities people get from those technologies that they don't get from the latest thing.
Why do I often listen to vinyl over streaming when I sit down to listen to my system? Streaming made digital music so ubiquitous and easy - it's everywhere, on my phone, in my car, on our smart speaker, available in my 2 channel system etc - that for me (and plenty of others) it made it seem less special, more for background listening during other activities. And the "world of choice at my fingertips" even when I sat in front of my 2 channel system still had that effect, where I'd find myself surfing music as I would the internet, rarely landing for long serious listening.
The "ritual" (as some put it) of vinyl, buying it, owning it, interacting with it, using a turntable etc, was much more satisfying over all and aided my focusing on music for long periods of time again.
And, like curling up on the sofa with a real, tangible book instead of an iPad, when listening to music on vinyl I get to finally unplug from digital life for a while, rather than interacting with yet another G*d D*mned computer/screen.
Why tube amps when I could use solid state? Again, I like how they look, I like the merge of the historical/engineering/conceptual/aesthetic, where I actually "see" the music being amplified, glowing through the tubes. Even more important is that I find I enjoy the sound of my system using my tube amps vs newer solid state. (All caveats acknowledged).
Plus, technologies like vinyl and tube amps can allow for a level of tinkering that can increase some people's engagement.
Those seem like pretty good reasons to me, and many others
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antennaguru
Senior Member
We happily own our homes, vehicles, audio systems and media, as well as everything else we use. We’re not interested in sharing!
As far as environmental impact goes we buy our vehicles new and drive them for 300K miles. This is considered by many as the lowest environmental impact for vehicle usage.
When plug-in electric vehicles become available with 4wd, 500 miles range, and similar interior space to our Honda Pilot we would certainly run the numbers based on 300K miles usage and consider them. However they are not yet available and the environmental impact of at least 3 sets of used-up batteries may well be greater.
As far as environmental impact goes we buy our vehicles new and drive them for 300K miles. This is considered by many as the lowest environmental impact for vehicle usage.
When plug-in electric vehicles become available with 4wd, 500 miles range, and similar interior space to our Honda Pilot we would certainly run the numbers based on 300K miles usage and consider them. However they are not yet available and the environmental impact of at least 3 sets of used-up batteries may well be greater.
I do not agree at all. Synthesizers can make fantastic sounds and just as expressionate as any grand piano, in their own synth-sound domain. Also a digital modelled piano engine (eg. Pianoteq) can make piano sounds just as good as any analog piano.
Hmmm. Back in the 70's, Alvin Toffler wrote the book Future Shock. He claimed that people were suffering from information overload as a reaction to technological advancement that outstripped their ability to keep up.
The next popular book to explore that topic was John Naisbitt's Megatrends, in which he described a reaction to high-tech which he called high-touch. The idea from both of these is that many people can only tolerate so much technological change before they start to rebel against technology, even when they continue to use it.
Toffler's future-shocked people grew up at the tail end of the industrial revolution, in which the principle human enterprise was making things, and what put them into shock was the rapid evolution of information technology. But nobody in Toffler's analysis had actually grown up in the Information Age. By now, they have.
Even so, we find younger folks still needing a high-touch reaction to technology, though even they have embraced the larger trends resulting from that shift (such as to the gig economy, more focus on the home, more decentralized markets and social structures, etc.). So, Toffler's extrapolations haven't worked out quite as well as Naisbitt's, though both were guilty of using current trends relevant in the 70's and early 80's as examples for the sorts of linear extrapolation that just look goofy in hindsight. Naisbitt didn't reckon that humans are what they are, and crave power and wealth as a fundamental aspect of their humanity. So, even the decentralized stuff has recentralized, though around different structures (social media being the poster-child example).
Some of the value we place in archaic technology is therefore:
1. A matter of historical and intellectual expression. It's easier to know things and become expert on non-software-driven technologies for those who don't develop software or look at the world through the lens of software development. So, a non-EE like me can learn a lot about discrete amplification, for example, without having to become J_J on the topic of signal processing and the software that does it. A person with little in the way of engineering (read: math, or at least numerical) skill can still become expert in experience-driven mechanical technologies, including vinyl records. It's a technology that could survive the apocalypse, even if the LP's themselves don't. Much science fiction has treated that subject.
2. An expression of nostalgia. This is the usual suspect, but I really think it describes only some of the high-touch reaction.
3. A belief that older is better. This is a medieval concept that reflects the general belief that things are getting worse. The phrase "old saw" comes from the dark ages, when older stuff was thought to be better than newer stuff. This counters the optimism that newer is always better, which is as unreasonable in many ways as the claim that more expensive is always better. Throughout the Industrial Age, we were conditioned to believe that newer is better--"the new broom sweeps clean" (an expression from the Age of Enlightenment). In my view, we are back to the Old Saw. So much what we buy is cost-engineered to oblivion--better in respect to data but not nearly so robustly and beautifully produced. Most of what has kept inflation in check has been production cost engineering more than stability of the currency, it seems to me. The price of three-dimensional skills has far outpaced inflation, as anyone seeking a really qualified electronics technician to repair their stereo stuff can attest. Technology helps here, with such things as 3D printing and the like, but some things, once gone, will never been seen again. So, data notwithstanding, I'll be able to keep a turntable going far more easily than keeping a CD player going into the future. And the devices we are buying to stream now will be technologically obsolete for one reason or another in a couple of years--long before their hardware has failed. This reason requires a distinction between "works better" and "is better".
4. A rebellion against technologists, and their notion that data must trump feelings. Sometimes, the archaic technology is simply good enough, and brings attributes not captured in the data, such as the joy of making it work in spite of its obsolescence.
Of these, only some apply specifically to those who grew up before the Information Age.
Rick "a matter of perspective" Denney
The next popular book to explore that topic was John Naisbitt's Megatrends, in which he described a reaction to high-tech which he called high-touch. The idea from both of these is that many people can only tolerate so much technological change before they start to rebel against technology, even when they continue to use it.
Toffler's future-shocked people grew up at the tail end of the industrial revolution, in which the principle human enterprise was making things, and what put them into shock was the rapid evolution of information technology. But nobody in Toffler's analysis had actually grown up in the Information Age. By now, they have.
Even so, we find younger folks still needing a high-touch reaction to technology, though even they have embraced the larger trends resulting from that shift (such as to the gig economy, more focus on the home, more decentralized markets and social structures, etc.). So, Toffler's extrapolations haven't worked out quite as well as Naisbitt's, though both were guilty of using current trends relevant in the 70's and early 80's as examples for the sorts of linear extrapolation that just look goofy in hindsight. Naisbitt didn't reckon that humans are what they are, and crave power and wealth as a fundamental aspect of their humanity. So, even the decentralized stuff has recentralized, though around different structures (social media being the poster-child example).
Some of the value we place in archaic technology is therefore:
1. A matter of historical and intellectual expression. It's easier to know things and become expert on non-software-driven technologies for those who don't develop software or look at the world through the lens of software development. So, a non-EE like me can learn a lot about discrete amplification, for example, without having to become J_J on the topic of signal processing and the software that does it. A person with little in the way of engineering (read: math, or at least numerical) skill can still become expert in experience-driven mechanical technologies, including vinyl records. It's a technology that could survive the apocalypse, even if the LP's themselves don't. Much science fiction has treated that subject.
2. An expression of nostalgia. This is the usual suspect, but I really think it describes only some of the high-touch reaction.
3. A belief that older is better. This is a medieval concept that reflects the general belief that things are getting worse. The phrase "old saw" comes from the dark ages, when older stuff was thought to be better than newer stuff. This counters the optimism that newer is always better, which is as unreasonable in many ways as the claim that more expensive is always better. Throughout the Industrial Age, we were conditioned to believe that newer is better--"the new broom sweeps clean" (an expression from the Age of Enlightenment). In my view, we are back to the Old Saw. So much what we buy is cost-engineered to oblivion--better in respect to data but not nearly so robustly and beautifully produced. Most of what has kept inflation in check has been production cost engineering more than stability of the currency, it seems to me. The price of three-dimensional skills has far outpaced inflation, as anyone seeking a really qualified electronics technician to repair their stereo stuff can attest. Technology helps here, with such things as 3D printing and the like, but some things, once gone, will never been seen again. So, data notwithstanding, I'll be able to keep a turntable going far more easily than keeping a CD player going into the future. And the devices we are buying to stream now will be technologically obsolete for one reason or another in a couple of years--long before their hardware has failed. This reason requires a distinction between "works better" and "is better".
4. A rebellion against technologists, and their notion that data must trump feelings. Sometimes, the archaic technology is simply good enough, and brings attributes not captured in the data, such as the joy of making it work in spite of its obsolescence.
Of these, only some apply specifically to those who grew up before the Information Age.
Rick "a matter of perspective" Denney
This has been stated/asked many times but the answer is dependent on your definitions/standards for inexpensive and excellent. Change your adjectives and the options change.
It's not lunacy! When it is recorded, the Boesendorfer is no better than a digital piano--just a recording of piano sounds. When it is played in a large room (for comparison to the live electronic piano), the listener will hear a double-dose of room effects, and the electronic piano will sound cleaner. When recorded to eliminate room effects--and that could only happen with a recording made in an anechoic chamber--it has to be played in a large room to be tolerable. Etc.
An electronic instrument such as a Moog is its own thing. It's not trying to sound like an acoustic instrument. Thus, it's amplified sound is a primary sound (performer to keyboard/device/amplification to listener). A piano live performance is also a primary source (performer to piano to listener). A digital piano is trying to simulate a real piano, and will not be able to capture the dynamics or sound field. When played live, an electronic piano is a secondary sound because it is a model of an acoustic instrument (Performer to piano to simulation of piano to listener). All models are false, even if some are useful. A recording of a grand piano is at best tertiary source (Performer to piano to microphone/recording apparatus to transmission medium to playback apparatus to speaker to listener, with at least two of these steps nowhere near "transparent").
The secondary source of a live electronic piano might very well best a tertiary source of a grand piano recording, depending on the quality of the implementation of these.
Rick "recalling the use of digital samplers in lieu of percussion instruments we could not afford in an amateur orchestra back in the day" Denney
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Kal,
Don't you have a professional background in Neuroscience and Physiology?
If so, you of all people should seem well placed to understand the psychology behind these things (vs the facile takes we often see on the subjects).
Robin L
Master Contributor
The key word here is "record".
Recordings are a record of a particular time. My first record player appeared around 1960, I was 5. My uncle Charlie, a news reporter for KFWB Los Angeles, gave us a children's phonograph. Even in 1960 there were acoustic record players. Many children's records were still 78s at the time. This record player had two speeds, 78 & 45. The sound quality, by any reasonable standard, was abysmal. But if I wanted to recreate the sounds of my childhood, that would be the way to go.
Record collecting is more than simple access to music. People collect acoustic or analog discs for pretty much the same reason---they want to re-create something out of the past. Or they want to continue to live in the past. No reason to chide people who want to retain some memory of how things used to be. There are similar motivations for baseball card collectors or watch collectors. So, there's packaging and condition and rarity as considerations. And those who want to complete their journeys into the past often want to hear those recordings as they were heard when those recordings first appeared. Acoustic 78s sound best on acoustic players, they have an uncanny presence. And, in my experience, Frank Sinatra grey label Capitol LPs sound best via vintage tube gear. Of course, that's subjective and one can make an argument that replay of these recordings is more accurate in a good digital transfer. But that sort of reproduction will expose sonic warts that would have been inaudible back in the day.
I'm sure that many of those into obsolete tech do so for the reasons I've cited. As for myself, I prefer lossless rips of CDs via solid state memory. But I have owned older gear and recordings for the reasons cited. My father had a lot of the Classic Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra records on hand, playing those discs on gear from the time those records were being made is a wayback machine.
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I think I became very sensitive to, and annoyed by, the character of digitally sampled/recorded instruments, through playing keyboards from the 70's through to the late 90's (and somewhat beyond). I often had to fill out the sound with horn parts, string parts, grand piano parts etc, and always looked for keyboards and samples that sounded convincing. I never really found them, especially back in the early days, there was this thin, steely, glazed character to strings, horns and piano samples sounded plasticy and plinky.
Unfortunately those are still characteristics I pick up on when listening to recorded music, especially digital. I'm often struck by how the sound of a string section, for instance, could easily be a digital sample patch played on a keyboard, and that annoys me. It's when instruments are unambiguously more "real" sounding, especially in terms of presence and texture, that I find more satisfying.
(That's one of the reasons I've stated for why I actually enjoy the sound of orchestral instruments on many vinly LPs. At least in my playback system, there seems to be a slightly added sense of texture that reminds me more of the real thing and doesn't sound like a digital sample. I often find strings sound to me more like 'real strings' to me on vinyl - just a couple nights ago I was listening to a vinyl copy of a Star Wars medley and was utterly blown away by how easy it was to imagine I was hearing real string sections digging away, rather than digital strings samples).
OP
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He might be kidding around.
Now, now.
Don't tease the Old People.
Some of us still have a VCR flashing 12:00 for reruns of The Love Boat.
OP
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When it comes to cars, most people are driving older vehicles because they can't afford a new one. If you are talking about genuine antique cars, those are rarely daily drivers. Their owners don't want door dings and the like.
The rest of what you wrote, I'm OK with but change "gook" to "book" unless you are really curling up with a gook.
I think you're on the right track. It's the romance; the sense that we're keeping traditions alive. I would argue that it's a snapshot of our own lives - when we first became aware of something exciting that other people also enjoy.
To be fair, if there's something sticky on *my* car seat, it's not a biohazard.
That's the best synopsis of a pivotal book, yet.
I think we're seeing a similar disorientation playing out today.
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I grew up with friends really in to cars, and they had affection for specific older sports cars which is why they bought them when they could have driven something new.
Reminds me of why there are still so many motorcycle riders. Why ride a motorcycle when there are clearly "better ways" of driving from A to B, in a car where it's safer and (especially in places the experience cold/winter) you aren't limited to driving certain seasons and in a car you aren't exposed to the elements. My motorcycle-riding buddy will respond "that's the whole point, I like being exposed to the elements when I ride!"
To each his own I guess. I enjoy the physical aspects of vinyl that are a bother to someone else.
That was the book's preferred pronoun.
Fixed
posvibes
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I wish for the life of me I could go back to the age of 13 or 14 and through my adolescence when I listened to music before I heard about the concept of high fidelity. An AM playing transistor radio, or a vinyl playing picnic spinner with lousy sonic characteristics still managed to stir my emotional connection without fail, to the music more then than now.
I'll take a stab at this:
Sunken costs drive some hobbyists to "double down" on their assessment of gear, which was *not a trivial* expense , until recently.
It took me ten years to let go of my misconception about old gear and "what it's really worth".
Having just retired from auto tinkering (vision related) I think the preference for older vehicles ended with ECU tuned motors - when skill and attentive maintenance did make cars run better.
I'm a woodworking enthusiast, and firmly believe that things we do with our hands - without electricity, resonate with our sense of competence as Men in ways that can't be fully explained. Playing acoustic guitars, splitting wood, gardening, hunting, fishing, keeping old cars alive - that sort of thing.
Some of us get that from keeping audio antiques even when the new stuff is better, lighter and cheaper.
Sunken costs drive some hobbyists to "double down" on their assessment of gear, which was *not a trivial* expense , until recently.
It took me ten years to let go of my misconception about old gear and "what it's really worth".
Having just retired from auto tinkering (vision related) I think the preference for older vehicles ended with ECU tuned motors - when skill and attentive maintenance did make cars run better.
I'm a woodworking enthusiast, and firmly believe that things we do with our hands - without electricity, resonate with our sense of competence as Men in ways that can't be fully explained. Playing acoustic guitars, splitting wood, gardening, hunting, fishing, keeping old cars alive - that sort of thing.
Some of us get that from keeping audio antiques even when the new stuff is better, lighter and cheaper.
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