Why Do Old Technologies Persist in Audio?

[Chrispy]

Just jumping to end of thread from first post. When haven't old technologies held things back in this arena let alone so many others? Audio seems particularly afflicted, probably due how many bought into old analog tech as a basis?

 

[EJ3]

Just jumping to end of thread from first post. When haven't old technologies held things back in this arena let alone so many others? Audio seems particularly afflicted, probably due how many bought into old analog tech as a basis?

For me, I mix & match, most of my system is vintage (1996 or earlier TTs, cassette decks, RtR, AM/FM tuner, CD player/20 bitperfect CD recorder, etc. But it has an oppo 205 UDP (the DAC is great, too), APTX Bluetooth (from my computer upstairs). TAPE, DISK, LP, HARD DRIVE, SSD but streaming? NO.

 

[storing]

I like old fashion paper cone speakers and we can argue about it but I don't see a point. You will show me straight as an arrow modern ones with great twitters but a wrong timing and I will show you old ones which did up to 8 KHz on paper and have proper response time but won't be flat as an arrow. In the end that's my personal preference.

I'm intrigued, but I cannot tell whether this is an apples&oranges comparison when it comes to the 'wrong timing'; I don't think being paper has anything going for it with respect to timing. So is this about the crossover filters then (not sure how passive R/L/C components would have changed in modern speakers, and the basic filter principles also remain unchanged)? Or active vs passive? Or is it about freqency response after all? Could you give just one example of an old speaker and modern comparable one where you like the old one more because it has better timing, just so we know what you mean>

To throw in a similar example on the topic: while writing this a Telefunken radio from the sixties (or so) is playing in the background. Single paper cone speaker, typical sound (they really figured out bass from tiny cones long ago already), like this a lot. But not for actively listening to properly recorded/produced music: it has zero detail.

So why do I hold on to it, why does this technology persist (for now, I don't make myself much illusions about the future: this thing and others praised in this thread will be gone, forgotten and not used anymore in a couple of decades)? Well: the sound as said, it has nice buttons, it looks wildly different from anything one can buy now, and why put something to waste which still works?

 

[JJB70]

Some people like gear and the hobby is about the gear. Some like the tactile feel of electro-mechanical devices. Some like classic gear and restoring old stuff. There are lots of reasons why people might like old technologies. It isn't just audio, look at just about any interest group and there will be people who like old and classic stuff.

 

[Mart68]

There doesn't have to be a logical reason for going (or remaining) 'old school'.

I had to buy a new landline telephone last year, as my Southwestern Bell one from the 1980s finally died. I could have got the latest cordless type thing but instead this is what I went for (even older than the one it replaced):



I have no idea what my motivation was for this choice but I still made it.

 

[Jim Matthews]

Just jumping to end of thread from first post. When haven't old technologies held things back in this arena let alone so many others? Audio seems particularly afflicted, probably due how many bought into old analog tech as a basis?

There's a critical mass for broad adoption of a given technology.

The first real, affordable audio product was probably the Sony Walkman.
Look at how many people wear headphobes/earbuds today.

In photographs from before the 1980's - how often did people wear headphones, anywhere?

Remember the first cellphones? Suddenly, everybody has one.

High fidelity audio has always been a relatively small market and conservative purchases dominate those. (Who spends 10% of their income on a product that might not be supported in a year?)

 

[BDWoody]

My idea of hell. (I'm a city boy, situated where pretty much everything is easy to get to).

But I'd never question any one else's bliss. I do get the appeal (for others) of living among natural splendor.

It may be less about living surrounded by nature's beauty, and more about not being surrounded by so freaking many people.

I believe there are Urban people, and Rural people (obviously with some overlap on the Venn Diagram)... I'm definitely a Rural person.

I've lived in Los Angeles and Chicago for some years, and would rather live in a trailer in the woods than do it again.

 

[Doodski]

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.

I've moved all/everything into streaming. I always have a high bandwidth cable modem @home so I have tonnes of bandwidth. No speed or download limitations that affect me so streaming is great and I appreciate having everything in the cloud. I miss working on nice cassette decks but not R2R and turntables.

 

[Doodski]

when you throw an anchor into 100 feet of water, you can see it hit the bottom.

WowZer! That's very cool. I've seen the bottom house sized rocks in 84 feet depth in a mountain lake but that was not blue water.

 

[DSJR]

I'm a bloody hoarder and hate to get rid of things. Even units which fail I try to bodge/repair to extend its life if possible.. I learned a pertinent lesson thoiugh just this week as to how far behind the audiophile and audiophool fraternity really is today, seemingly stuck in the 1970's if not way before!

Our dining room telly is a late noughties (so old in tech terms) Panasonic Viera LCD TV, with a fine picture for secondary use and a headphone socket with enough juice. No idea what dac it uses but it's acceptable at least. Last week, it decided it didn't like the programme it was showing and the sound cut out, followed by the death of the set entirely twenty seconds after and rather than junk the thing, I found a cheap good used main board and replaced it (all screws and plug-in connectors and I'm ok with this from my job of decades updating and basic repairs using service kits of TV's of old), the TV now into a second light-use life so one less thing for scrap, but looking at the main board that came out I was stunned at the fine tech here, this on a twelve year old TV as well. Not just surface mount, but 'micro sized' surface mount components and ic's, loads of them! I took some pics but couldn't disable the flashlight on the phone and so the quality is bad. Only thing that bothered me is that once connected to the mains, this set's power supply (a more solid multi-smps type on an adjacent well labelled board) is always connected, the set's 'power switch' connected to the main board so basically shutting off the remote control and sub assemblies, rather than fully isolating the TV from the mains.

I appreciate that modern well priced dacs are not so far removed on their main boards to this now scrap TV board and maybe production of a thousand vs ten thousand (for the telly) will keep costs of the latter down, but looking at the agricultural domestic audio gear (preamps and line stages especially) still using discrete components, miles of circuit track & wiring and heavy switching quite often and so on where a miniature ic set very close if not adjacent to the connectors would be better I suspect. Hope you understand where I'm at here. I'm fast becoming disilusioned with the state of the domestic audio industry, where truth bending in the marketing and rife subjectivism is normal if not outright lies being told to get a sale ('cos you don't listen to test tones), yet the older part of me still likes to tinker with old stuff especially turntables - to keep my hand in

 

[EJ3]

WowZer! That's very cool. I've seen the bottom house sized rocks in 84 feet depth in a mountain lake but that was not blue water.

I like the mountain lakes, too. Water skied in one in S. Korea a few years ago (that was the last one that I was in near Gwang Yang [spelling?]). It appeared to be like being in the Austrian Alps.
S. Korea used to make some pretty good audio gear. Now it mostly comes from other places.

 

[MattHooper]

It may be less about living surrounded by nature's beauty, and more about not being surrounded by so freaking many people.

I believe there are Urban people, and Rural people (obviously with some overlap on the Venn Diagram)... I'm definitely a Rural person.

I've lived in Los Angeles and Chicago for some years, and would rather live in a trailer in the woods than do it again.

Yes, certainly it seems lots of us are different in that temperament.

I'm definitely a people person, an urbanite, and I find my battery is charged by being around people, especially a thriving metropolis. Same with my son. We live 10 minutes from downtown and we just love nighttime drives in the city, going downtown to walk around whenever we can, being among crowds, exploring new shops etc.

I had a movie-going pal who couldn't stand the presence of other people in the movie theater, was bothered by every wrapper crinkle, and he grew more and more misanthropic forcing us to sit at the back of the theater, then finally only to seeing movies in mostly empty theaters on weekday noon shows. Whereas there was nothing more I loved than being in a packed movie theater, the buzz etc. We ended up no longer seeing movies together.

mhardy6647's photo of where he lives is beautiful. But for me it looks like a nice place to visit; contemplating living there makes me break out in a cold sweat.

​

 

[billyjoebob]

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.

I don't think anyone with a muscle car ever considered or cared about "green-ness".
But all the other modern attributes are true.
Still don't think they/me would prefer the modern car.

 

[Ken1951]

We have a great compromise in living area. B'burg is a college town in the middle of Southwest Virginia. When the kids are here it's pretty active and during the summers and winter break it's pretty quiet. We have a great house with a great view of the mountains and there's really good birding for me all around here and a very active bird group. We're just a few minutes away from grocery stores and doctors. We left NoVA and don't miss it at all. Way, way too much traffic for us.

 

[aukje.dirkw]

If you are an audiophile and you aim to STAY an audiophile, you don't look for the best and most advanced solutions, because you'd end up simply listening to music. You're not an audiophile, you're just somebody who enjoys music. Boring, now you gotta invest tons of time looking for music you like.

Well that's no fun so let's imagine there's value in all the outdated stuff. Suddenly you have plenty of reasons to shell out money for things that have nothing to do with superior audio quality. It's "different" right? Play the same ten tracks but with a multitude of different gears. Audiophile for life!

 

[EJ3]

I don't think anyone with a muscle car ever considered or cared about "green-ness".
But all the other modern attributes are true.
Still don't think they/me would prefer the modern car.

My 79 TRANS AM (suspension redone with modern components, engine redone [400 CI, now 408 CI, 6.7 liters, Fuel Injection, other stuff, 473 HP, built in the late 80's], meets 1996 New Car Emission standards without using Catalytic convertors {which could set grass on fire in places that I take it}, 5 speed manual Doug Nash transmission [gets 20-23 MPG (which is better than my bought new 2012 Lexus ES350 [which only has 31K miles on it because I like driving the T/A: but now I have modified the Lexus some too & this year it went 12K because I liked my suspension & engine upgrades], put in a great STEREO with Bluetooth & Backup camera. & T-tops, open air driving (but kills fuel economy if going over 45 with the T-tops open). Mostly have them of when going to the beach or down wagon style trails in the woods. I do overland at low speed (10 MPH) but no what people would call off-roading.
So=modern great CAR STEREO, comfort, driving fun, good fuel economy, can drive most places that you could walk or ride a horse without stress.
I have figured out how to get better power & economy in it's next iteration (& importantly to me: better stereo). I haven't seen a modern car that has the attributes I want for less than 6 times what I have invested. Like my mostly VINTAGE STEREO, my upgrades are meant to modernize the attributes that I want (and can't get elsewhere without paying an arm & a leg). So yes, it's greener than it ever was and has a bigger performance envelope in driving, STEREO, VIDEO, etc.

 

[blueone]

My 79 TRANS AM (suspension redone with modern components, engine redone [400 CI, now 408 CI, 6.7 liters, Fuel Injection, other stuff, 473 HP, built in the late 80's], meets 1996 New Car Emission standards without using Catalytic convertors {which could set grass on fire in places that I take it}...

This is completely off-topic, but I'm curious. How do you know the '79 meets 1996 Federal Emission Standards without cats? Not only is this virtually impossible with such a low-tech engine (actually, any gasoline engine), but removing a catalytic converter from a car that originally came with one is a federal crime. Very likely you're putting out more unburned hydrocarbons than a whole neighborhood of compliant vehicles. (Test case - when the car is sitting and idling, do you smell gasoline in the exhaust stream? If you can, passing any post-1975 emissions standards in the US isn't happening.)

 

[rdenney]

There’s an aspect to the aging thing. It isn’t just that old guys have lost the ability to learn. It’s that the learning we have took decades to develop, and the perspective gained from that suggests to us that it is still relevant. But those who intentionally eschew “out-dated” technologies invalidate the expertise that takes years to develop, and are often too young to have the perspective that would prevent them from making the same mistakes again.

Is there nothing learned in developing an understanding of supposedly obsolete technologies that is useful to the proponents of current technologies?

Example: current business practice for developing new products is to ignore early adopters and use those resources to attract a sufficient critical mass of new adopters to justify standing up a service operation. This is done on purpose, by the way. This philosophy worships at the altar of innovation rather than sustainability (in any sense). But 30-year-olds, for all their rhetoric, lack the perspective needed to think clearly about sustainability. Given that true innovation is more rare than they imagine, they doom what could be useful products because of business choices, and focus on marketing rather than products and customers.

And they will dismiss the foregoing paragraph with a roll of the eyes, and accuse Rick of another “get off my lawn” mini-sermon.

Rick “seeing more agism than urbanism, but those do correlate” Denney

 

[mhardy6647]

I don't think anyone with a muscle car ever considered or cared about "green-ness".
But all the other modern attributes are true.
Still don't think they/me would prefer the modern car.

Absolutely! But, in point of fact, a modern Challenger or Mustang or Camaro will outperform its namesake and do less environmental mileage per mile doing so!

Weird but true!

 

[Kal Rubinson]

There’s an aspect to the aging thing. It isn’t just that old guys have lost the ability to learn. It’s that the learning we have took decades to develop, and the perspective gained from that suggests to us that it is still relevant. But those who intentionally eschew “out-dated” technologies invalidate the expertise that takes years to develop, and are often too young to have the perspective that would prevent them from making the same mistakes again.

Agreed.

Is there nothing learned in developing an understanding of supposedly obsolete technologies that is useful to the proponents of current technologies?

Basic physics.