Old vs. New


I see a lot of threads on various audiophile forums that basically go like this: I sold my 5-6-10 year old speakers, amp etc. and bought new this or that and it kills the old stuff and sounds so much better.

I have listened to a lot of classic hi-end speakers, amps and preamps and also listen to a lot of FOTM stuff and to my ears a lot of the "old junk" sounds better, sometimes a lot better. Don't get me wrong a lot of the new gear on the market sounds very good.

So let me ask a question, why do so may people automatically assume that older gear sounds inferior to new stuff? Audio tech did not really changed that much in 10 y. We still have the same two ears now as we did 10 y ago? If something was good 10 years go why is it no good now?
faust3d

Showing 1 response by onhwy61

Old is the new new. Or is it new is the old new? New is the new old? Anyway, I once read a story about how back in the mid-60s the engineers at Motown records swapped out all their tube Neumann microphones for the brand new transistor models. They knew they sounded different, but they loved the fact that the transistor mics sounded the same from one hour to the next, something that was a real problem for the tube mics. Flash forward to the beginning of the 21st century and tube microphones are back in vogue and selling better than ever. Sometimes it's not a question of new being better, but just being different.

An interesting proposal is to take the classic old designs and update them with newer (and demonstrably better) parts. There would have to be some adjustments, but I suspect that these designs would compare most favorably to modern products.