Slashdot Mirror
Digital Generation, Analog Retro Chic
securitas writes "The New York Times' Juliet Chung writes about the latest technology trend: the growing popularity of analog technology with a generation that has grown up digital. 'Yesterday's technology designs are becoming popular among those in their teens and 20's eager to usher back a time they experienced only barely, if at all.' An MIT graduate student interviewed for the article, Ali Rahimi, was tired of the 'impersonal, unthinking' nature of modern technology, so he hacked an old telephone handset together with his mobile phone with the rationale, 'The handset has been going through about a hundred years of evolution in design and ... have the perfect shape.' According to Brown University technology historian Steven Lubar, 'When the available technology converges at a certain performance threshold ... consumers begin to base their choices on nontechnical considerations'. Chung also includes a sidebar that lists some of the new retro analog devices and interpretations, ranging from radio PC case mods to ancient clunker cell phones. Any other cool or interesting retro analog devices or hacks out there?" I've personally enjoyed owning tube amps on and off - the sound warmth, whether it be psychological or real, is definitely different then solid state amps.
Aopen released a hybrid tube audio-based motherboard back in... 2002? Perhaps it was 2001 even... My analog brain seems to have problems with old, non-important dates.
Also, it's worth pointing out that for most musicians, particularly guitarists, tube technology has never gone away. It may have gotten a little more scarce in the consumer world, but musicians have long known that tubes offer an element that while perceptive, often enhances any sound, digital, or analog-based.
It's also worth pointing out that many companies are now emulating tube sounds. For example, I sold my old Marshall stack a long time ago, and moved to an Line6 AX2 tube-modelling amp. It's very impressive, and allows me to achieve many natural sounding tones, without requiring multiple amps, or annual tube replacements.
T-Racks is a notable piece of software which can do wonders to your music tracks. Many of its functions are designed to emulate tube-based equipment.
So while it's nice to see that more people are re-discovering the magic of analog equipment, it's not like it's ever gone away.
Actually, solid-state does not equivocate to "digital"
;-)
*Sigh* I'm not normally a grammar nazi, but one of my pet peeves is people using 'bigger' words than necessary to sound more sophisticated... especially when it's the wrong word:
equivocate
Main Entry: equivocate
Function: intransitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -cated; -cating
1 : to use equivocal language especially with intent to deceive
2 : to avoid committing oneself in what one says
synonym: see LIE
Next time try:
'Actually, solid-state is not the same as "digital"'
or
'Actually, solid-state does not necessarily mean "digital"
or
'Actually, solid-state doesn't have to mean (or be) "digital"'
Your remark about politicians is ironic considering you seem to be trying to sound like one
-chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
It's all psychological. Or settings.
No, actually it's not. As a simple google search (oh the horror) will reveal, there are well documented differences between the audio produced by digital and analogue amplifiers.
Turn up the bass, and poof, sounds warmer.
Bass doesn't equal warmth; an analogue amp may well produce less bass, but the nature of distortion (even vs odd) leads to the effect we descibe as warmth. Even-order distortion is as unique to analogue amps as odd-order distortion is to digital amps, and this is completely unrelated to bass.
I'm not saying that turning up the bass doesn't make shitty little systems sound better, because it often does. However, most shitty little systems come with shitty little speakers that tend to deal with bass badly (or are just underpowered), thereby introducing a far worse distortion.
Using an analogue amplifier can make a real difference to your listening experience, and you can still turn the bass up afterwards...
If you want to experience some amazing sound without the inconvenience of paying $100 for rare vinyl and only being able to play it a handful of times before it starts to wear down, there are some pretty simple things you can do. You also don't need to spend thousands of dollars on hardware to get something far better than you likely have at the moment.
1. Audition some CD players. No, they don't all sound the same, in fact you'll be amazed how different a handful of $300-400 CD players can sound. Last time I did this a Denon multibit player blew everything else away. Ignore the specs, they're largely meaningless at this point.
2. Get a pair of good headphones. Headphones have much better bang-for-the-buck than speakers, you don't have to be careful with room layout, there's no complicated setup or calibration, and so on. You can get a good pair of headphones for under $150 if you shop around. Sennheisers are generally good, go and sit and audition some; the most expensive are often not the best. For portable listening, I particularly like Sennheiser's PX200s, which fold up to pocket size and are good enough that I use them at home, and cheap enough that I'm prepared to risk sitting on them. The PX250 is the same headphone, but with noise cancellation, for plane flights.
3. Get a headphone amplifier. Even a cheap $150 headphone amp will let you hear detail you never knew existed, and open up the sound so it sounds like the musicians are in the room with you. If you like portable, get a Xin mini amp, it's the size of a matchbox and runs on 3xAAAs and will make your iPod or other portable device sound several times better. Any headphone amp with crossfeed will be a big improvement over no headphone amp at all, so don't worry too much over which to get.
4. If you listen to computer audio, either get an audiophile quality sound card, or get an external USB sound processor. I have an M-Audio Audiophile USB, which just craps all over the built in sound of any Mac, and Apple's sound hardware is pretty good compared to the average PC's generic hardware. Again, cost can be under $150.
So there you go, four ways to massively improve your sound, three for under $150 each, no major skills involved.
Of course, you can go much further. A pair of electrostatic headphones will blow away your $150 Sennheisers, but most people don't have a couple of grand to spend on headphones. I'm sure your goldenears friend would be unimpressed by my choices above. I just wanted to say that most people don't need lots of technical knowledge or massive amounts of cash to make a huge improvement in the quality of sound they listen to.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Is there such an analysis somewhere? Yes. In fact, there's about as many as you'd expect there to be. Here's a quick sampler:
Tubes vs. Transistors: Is There an Audible Difference? (From the Audio Engineering Society)
Tubes vs. Solid State
That's just the tip of the iceberg, my friend. I mean, that's just generally the difference. Once you start considering different design paradigms, there's all kinds of other stuff to get into. The analog vs. digital debate, as far as I'm concerned, is moot; analog and digital can (and do) peacefully coexist. Some people like the way certain things sound, and maybe that thing is a radio from 1938 with tubes, maybe it's your solid-state computer speakers playing digital source.
There is a lot of engineering that goes into making audio equipment and audiophiles aren't all rubbing bizarre cream over everything that enters their houses. Pick up an issue of Stereophile (although for actual reading, I'd suggest Listener) sometime. As much as you'll find it astounding what some do with their stereos, you'll also find it filled with graphs on everything from spectral decay to impedence to power to frequency response... There is a science to audio engineering; just because the results of that science may or may not appeal to you, doesn't mean they're not there.