Very little was better in "the good old days" except age. Medicine, cars, household conveniences and audio were all grossly inferior to today. Nostalgia creates a massive and cloudy filter. Back in my youth I thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if the world could be like Scotty on Star Trek and I could just tell a computer what to play?" Well guess what? Now I can. And no snap, crackle, pop or hiss.
Thinking about the good old days...
I'm definitely an old geezer, and have a lot of experiences and memories to reflect on. Lately, I've been remembering the enjoyment of "audio" back when I was just starting down this path: the music was just so amazingly enjoyable and fun. I think my greatest satisfaction with my own audio stuff was when what-passed-for-my-system was a Fisher 90T tuner/preamp, Fisher 80AZ amp, a University speaker enclosure that I built ftom a lot fitted with 12" University woofer and some University tweeter (I forget what). The only source was a Lenco turntable with a GE VR2 cartridge. Dang, that stuff was just so wonderful to my young self!
Showing 4 responses by jssmith
@bdp24 Very little was better? How about 1950’s Fender, Gibson, and Martin Guitars. Gretsch and Radio King drumsets, K. Zildjian cymbals made in Turkey. Big ol’ Cadillac El Dorados and Lincoln Continentals (just yesterday I saw one with a black paint job and white leather interior, dropped a few inches. Wicked cool! Like I said ... I’ve played guitar since 1985. Vintage guitars are only sought after because of nostalgia. They are inferior to today’s guitars in almost every way. Those old baseball bat necks were awful. And the lacquer finishes broke down. CNC’d guitars are way more accurately made than old hand-made ones. Today, the choice of guitars is infinitely better. The choice of pickups is infinitely better. The choice of finishes is better. Tremolos are way better. And the overall playability is better. And today’s guitar’s are cheaper and the cost point of diminishing returns is way lower than the old days. I’m about to sell a Marshall head I bought over 30 years ago. Some sucker’s going to give me almost $3,000 for this one-trick pony. Why? Nostalgia. Meanwhile my software amp simulator sounds better, cost 1/20th the price and has thousands of times more versatility. Or going analog, I can use my $100 power amp and my $250 Amptweaker distortion pedal to blow it away in sound quality. Old cars were lucky to reach 100,000 miles. Today that’s a baseline. Old cars were rust buckets, had finnicky carburetors, weak brakes, crappy bias-ply tires that lasted, at best, 25,000 miles, spark plugs that lasted 20,000 miles, finnicky distributors, rotors and points, exhausts that rusted away (remember when Midas used to be a muffler shop?) and if you got in an accident above 40 MPH you were pretty much dead. Heck, a new Corolla puts out more horsepower than that Cadillac. The only thing inferior about today’s cars are all the plastic parts. |
@bdp24 Modern violin players are still trying to recreate instruments that sound like the Stradivari A blind test already debunked the Stradivarius myth. People, including elite violinists, actually preferred the sound of the modern violin*. Again, it's all about nostalgia and status. There's an actual term for this longing for the past called Rosy retrospection. Even pro musicians are not immune to it. The most technically-proficient guitar players (Vai, Govan, Malmsteen, Batio, Buckethead, etc.) all play guitars of their own design, not vintage ones. Your Prius analogy is flawed. In keeping with your original cars, I'd take a new Lincoln Continental over a (new) old one. The new model will ride better, handle better, stop quicker, last far longer, be safer, have a better sound system, have more comfortable heated seats, have tires that last at least twice as long, an exhaust that will never rust, a body that will take far longer to rust, and be quieter. As far as CDs, almost all mine have been sold. Why waste the space and suffer the inconvenience when I can stream and play almost any album in existence, by voice-control no less, for $150/yr? As for LPs, I gave those away in 1990. Time marches on. * https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/million-dollar-strads-fall-modern-violins-blind-sound-check * https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/04/elite-violinists-fail-distinguish-legendary-violins-modern-f... |
@bdp24 No. I prefer my music to be undistorted and my amps to be no more expensive than necessary to produce audible accuracy, which in the case of solid state is very cheap. Although I have no problem with people who like the sound of tubes' particular distortion when it's audible. Whatever floats your boat. Just don't call it more accurate. BTW, I have participated in two blind tests for amps. Roger Modjeski (of Music Reference and RAM Tube Works fame), though a completely "modern" amplifier designer, considered the OTL design of Julius Futterman ...Is that the same OTL that failed blind testing against a $220 Pioneer receiver in the infamous 1987 Stereo Review test? Some feel the same way about the Quad ESL, another design from the 1950's I remember hearing the Quads in the mid/late 80's, but I don't remember what it sounded like. A speaker that did stand out to me at the time was a Magnepan MG-III(?) for acoustic instruments and an Ohm F(?). Magnepan was the only speaker that could fool me on acoustic guitar. No other speaker I've heard sounds "real" with that or other instruments. But if someone was going to give me a set I'd chose Revel Salon 2. Dolby Labs agrees. |