Vintage technology and why some people still use it | Hacker News Reader

Vintage technology and why some people still use it

bbc.co.uk

90 pointsopen-source-ux125 comments

I use a lot of technology I guess some would consider vintage. It is not due to any specific preference for vintage or as a vintage hobby. It's just that a lot of the older products are so much better for the consumer.

It makes me sad because we have the technology and resources as an industry to make so much better products than ever before, but we just don't focus on quality for the consumer anymore. Can we collectively care to do better?

Today main product design drivers are collecting usage data and selling it to advertisers, enforcing dependency on cloud services, preventing repairability and ownership (vs. ongoing licensing). All these factors improve recurring revenue for the producing company but all of them are anti-features for the consumer.

All my cars are older and will forever be. No TV screen on the dash to go bad, no integrated CAN bus making diagnostics and repair a nightmare, no fly by wire nonsense. No phone-home spyware or OTA update horrors. If a relay goes bad it's a physical relay I can swap, easy. And so on, everything is fixable.

I unpacked my old Wii to play with my son. All the games are on DVD, so I own them, they won't disappear from the cloud, no dependency on internet connectivity, no subscriptions to pay.

For music in the house I run many squeezebox devices. The server is self-hosted and open source, no dependency on anything external, no subscriptions or cloud service to be suddenly cancelled.

> All my cars are older and will forever be. No TV screen on the dash to go bad, no integrated CAN bus making diagnostics and repair a nightmare, no fly by wire nonsense. No phone-home spyware or OTA update horrors. If a relay goes bad it's a physical relay I can swap, easy. And so on, everything is fixable.

Fuel efficiency is worse in older cars:

https://www.bts.gov/content/average-fuel-efficiency-us-light...

So are emissions:

https://www.epa.gov/automotive-trends/highlights-automotive-...

Safety standards, too. All of those things are quality benefits for the median consumer (who doesn't even know what a CAN bus is).

Yeah, but on the other hand... http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20160809-your-car-is-not-your...

> Fuel efficiency is worse in older cars

But the emissions footprint in producing the new, fuel efficient car to replace your old one is quite staggering

I agree, and you absolutely shouldn't replace a car on the basis of fuel economy savings alone. (Having said that, most people aren't junking their old cars if they have a useful service life left, they're reselling them into the used car market.)

But if you compare a new 1998 car to a new 2018 car of the same class, the 2018 car is absolutely going to be better on fuel efficiency and emissions than the 1998 car. And it's not like they got better at fuel efficiency and worse at user maintainability for entirely unrelated reasons; sticking little computers and sensors in things like the fuel injection system is why they're more fuel efficient/better at emissions. (Yes, the little dashboard display is not saving you anything on fuel, it's not 100% related, but they're not fully orthogonal issues either.

Sure, emissions are undeniably better (unless you have a VW, haha) but this is only a net gain if the car gets scrapped, not sold into the used market like you say most people do - that way we have the old smoker still driving around, plus the new one and all its manufacturing costs. The only real gain is for the new car buyers psychologically - they get to feel like they're doing their part, buying their way to a greener planet.

Some number of cars are always going to need to be made new in a year -- due to collisions, wear and tear, etc. It is better for everybody, ceterus parabus, if newer cars are better at fuel efficiency and emissions. It is possible that the number of new cars is higher than it needs to be, but I am unaware of any evidence that suggests it is. Regardless, for each marginal car bought, it's better if that car is more fuel-efficient.

This is the root of the problem. We need to reduce car dependency.

> Sure, emissions are undeniably better (unless you have a VW, haha)

I have a 1985 VW van, so it's haha the wrong direction for me.

It also depends on how much you’re driving. If you average say 5k miles per year it’s likely selling your older car is worse for the environment as someone else is likely to drive more. On the other hand people driving 30k miles per year should really be in a very efficient vehicle.

Exactly, rather than getting two new car, I just drive the wifes old less fuel efficient car for those days when I need to go to the office, 15km away. She then got a new more efficient car as she drives 100km per day.

Cars are insanely expensive here, and at 150.000km the car isn’t really in need of replacement. Doing so would also be more environmentally damaging, compared to driving it less than a 100km per week.

For anyone looking to research that, this[1] video aggregated some source studies. tl;dw: estimates are between 2-17 metric tons of CO2 emissions to produce a new car (SUVs are more). And during operation an average car emits 5.2 metric tons of CO2 per yer.

For a concrete example, a 2021 Toyota Camry Hybrid at 52mpg emits 170g/mile of CO2[2]. A 2000 Camry 4cl at 24mpg emits 340g/mile[3]. Assuming you drive an average 13,500 miles/year[4] the break-even point for CO2 is about 4.5 years.

If you have the 2000 V6 Camry at 20mpg then the break-even is closer to 2.5 years.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RhtiPefVzM [2] https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=43307 [3] https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=15965 [4] https://www.caranddriver.com/research/a32880477/average-mile...

Not just the cars ... maintaining the economy that creates those jobs that make new new stuff, and let people pay those new prices ... while wasting the old, and paying/maintaining someone expert enough to keep them running.

Also fixing, improving: you gain that knowledge for yourself and share it with others. Instead of remaining a one-trick-pony. How many people even know how to change an oil filter? Hell you may wind up paying someone to change your battery. How crazy is that? Winding up tightly dependent.

Why not pay someone else to change the battery? The guy in the AAA truck who replaced mine also diagnosed it was bad in the first place, brought the new one, and took the old one away. I wasn't going to do any of that stuff.

> Why not pay someone else to change the battery?

You can of course always pay for service if you don't feel like doing it.

But that's missing the point. With older cars you have a choice of DIY or pay someone.

With newer BMWs or example, even something as trivial as changing the battery requires dealer intervention because the ECU is coded to the battery (for no reason whatsoever, other than proprietary lock-in).

Today, there are still independent BMW-certified mechanics who have access to the proprietary tooling to do these operations so if you make friends with one, you can still change a battery yourself. But nothing prevents BMW from cutting them off someday and then you're truly stuck with a dependency on the dealer. And what happens when BMW decides your model is no longer supported because they want you to buy a new one?

No thanks. I'll have older cars which can be fixed mechanically without any DRM nonsense.

Ok, but BMW is particularly bad about it. Like, they are famous for this vendor lock in bullshit. I've had a brand new Mercedes AMG, 2016 model and did pretty much all maintenance by myself. Changing brake pads, oil, and yes, replacing the battery last year - no problems at all, could just do it myself. It definitely felt like a car that could be worked on by anybody without the electronics getting in the way or throwing an error just because you disconnected something for 2 minutes.

> Today, there are still independent BMW-certified mechanics who have access to the proprietary tooling to do these operations so if you make friends with one, you can still change a battery yourself.

Are we talking about secondhand owners? People who buy BMWs don't have friends.

In that case I feel for them, but at least there's plenty of other (generally cheaper and more reliable) brands.

> Fuel efficiency is worse in older cars

On fleet-wide average, for sure. But not for all cars.

One of my cars (daily commuter pre-pandemic) is a late 80s Honda CRX, it gets nearly 40 MPG. Even in 2021 many (probably most) cars can't match that kind of efficiency.

(Energy cost per mile is lower than for my partner's electric Fiat 500e!)

The car that makes me sad and almost angry is the original CRX HF (mine is not an HF). This is a car that got over 50MPG with mid-80s engine technology!

https://jalopnik.com/1986-honda-crx-hf-393147

If Honda had continued developing the HF engine, what kind of mileage could an evolved 2021 CRX HF be getting today? We'll never know, but I'd guess over 70MPG.

Yes! I owned a Honda Civic 1996 with VTEC petrol engine and it had the same fuel efficiency as my current Prius.

Honda has done some amazing things with engine design, and they are catching up to Toyota in terms of reliability as well. 2018 Honda Accord - 4 door sedan - I4 has 45 mpg in real world driving. https://www.truedelta.com/Honda-Accord/mpg-108

There were a lot more smaller car models in the 80s-90s which makes a difference. It also helps that older cars are less likely to be 4WD/AWG. Finally, a MT will be more efficient than a torque-converter automatic with the same number of speeds.

As a ranty aside: You are not safer in an older car because they usually have lousy side-impact ratings. Also, the cyber-security issues of newer cars are overstated. While new cars have many computers, outside of what's in the head unit these aren't general purpose computers, but rather are running code bare-meta, don't communicate on anything other than a can bus or i2c and follow a decentralized architecture. Car manufacturers are extremely conservative in their designs. There have been documented issues like the Jeep Cherokee head unit being able to send arbitrary messages over CAN via the head unit cellular link but but all current car models have telematics.

There’s more to life than fuel economy and emissions. One trip of a bulk freighter carrying wood chips to be made into toilet paper produces more emissions than hundreds of thousands of people driving their cars all year long. If you decide that you want increased fuel economy and better emissions, well that’s your choice. As for me I will purchase things I don’t have to throw away. New cars are actually pretty shitty compared to ones from a couple decades ago, this is common knowledge among auto enthusiasts.

My mechanic complains about newer cars with all these electronics. If a car is officially totaled but still repairable it can be a big problem. Say the car is totaled and someone buys it to fix it. The door lock needs to be fixed but you need an electronic code from the manufacturer to make the repair. But since it was totaled, the vin has been removed from the manufacturer’s database so they can’t provide the code.

Or you have one of these cars with sensors in the windshield to detect other cars on the road and your windshield cracks. That’s going to cost a hell of a lot more to fix than a regular windshield.

I am starting to contemplate that with older computers, energy efficiency and other such sacrifices may actually be worth it in some cases. The internet connectivity issues is particularly annoying because its "primary beneficiary" is often not the hardware purchaser.

I believe the "latest technology" today, as in the stuff discussed on HN, is often less reliable than what came before. Convenience is interesting, but if asked to choose, I would choose reliability over convenience. I also fear that younger generations are being conditioned to accept lower threshholds of reliability.

At some point I feel like ICE cars might become outlawed, so it might be a good time to start building your own electric car.

That would be near impossible in the Federal system we have. It is the purview of the state to license vehicles on its roads and to determine what characteristics the vehicles must have in order to be given a license. But as much as some areas are concerned with emissions, 17 states don't even do any emissions testing and of the remaining 33 states that do, only 10 require emissions testing statewide instead of in just a few areas.

I can see some of the blue areas banning all sorts of things, but the red areas wont, and there are constitutionality issues with trying to stretch the commerce clause to things like forcing states to ban certain types of technology. Even the Federal highway speed limits have been a constitutional nightmare and many states no longer follow the national speed limits, which were also designed to improve on fuel economy and reduce emissions (e.g. https://www.newsweek.com/kentucky-judge-rules-states-speed-l...)

I don't know the American system well, but what about via interstate commerce stuff - banning selling ICE cars across state lines for example.

When lockdown-related stresses got to me, I found a lot of comfort in my old Nintendo DS Lite. I never saw the appeal of retro game collecting, but that combination of comfortable design, good battery life, and gentle screen display was exactly what I needed to ignore the doom scrolling and stresses triggered my more modern technology.

I have been tempted to get an emulator console, but they all have brighter, higher resolution screens and shorter battery lives, so I don't actually know if I'll get in the same "flow". Maybe I'll reassess after I finish this stack of JRPGs (which may take a decade).

Once everything became "connected" (around 2010), obsolescence became inevitable. That Psion5 or Zen Stone can remain timeless because they will never sync a contact list or download a patch. The owners know what they do, and seem confident that they will not fail.

I picked up a WiiU in 2018 but never really gave it much attention until lockdown. Wii Sports was a good bit of entertainment at times with my family, but I spent many nights playing Mario kart online with strangers, or playing Zelda Breath of the Wild and a few others. Being in lockdown is frustrating but the opportunity to explore a digital world and engage with other people online is a good distraction.

I've been doing what you describe with emulator consoles during the lockdown as well. I got the NES and SNES classic versions, and they do indeed have that same effect for me. I use them on a TV with no other computer or cable hookups, and it's perfectly comfortable to get into the flow of the game with no doom-scrolling temptations or other distractions.

If you want a fun emulator project, try building a RetroPie arcade. I just finished one with my son for about $150, including the raspberry pie, the joysticks and buttons Amazon for $35), the wood for the enclosure and a super cheap screen and speakers.

I’ve found so many fun arcade games that I never had a chance to play in a real arcade as well as galaga and other classics. Highly recommend!

That is great. Any good tips on the wood part ?

We used 3/4 inch MDF (which is basically just sawdust and glue) along with a few 2X4’s. A regular saw works but I borrowed a jigsaw to make things easier.

You will need a drill with a 1 inch wood bit to make the holes for the buttons.

Hope that helps!

Great. Thank you!

Which JRPGs?

The sound on the DS Lite is really good too even compared with the 2DS and 3DS. If you hold it at the right distance you can get a really nice stereo surround effect.

I also have a few vintage-ish computing devices from the pre-2010 non-connected era. One is an AlphaSmart Dana "smart" keyboard that runs a version of PalmOS which I use for notetaking. It emulates a USB keyboard so it's easy to send notes to any computer. I can write equations in Pandoc markdown and render in PDF later. The other is a Garmin GPSMap 62s from the late 00s/early 10s. Unfortunately, I'm unaware of open software to interact with it, but Garmin has shockingly kept the GPSMap 6x series in production and still provides updates for both the BaseCamp desktop software and firmware.

Vintage technology is often far more repairable than modern. My turntable and all the equipment I use with it included schematics and booklets with information about how they operate. Even cars used to be like this, but that has mostly been lost in the interest of operational simplicity.

Almost all of my old household appliances included schematics, but new stuff only includes operational instructions. It makes me sad we have lost this culture of tinkering.

Plus we can rely on survivor bias! The stuff that’s still working was clearly built very well. The stuff that wasn’t isn’t working.

“flight proven”

This is because you cannot copyright schematics (you can only as a painting - connections between components can't be copyrighted, except if something was very unique you could get a patent). So the instant someone produced a successful device, a clone was being made. It was more difficult when products used microcontrollers etc, but some companies in China would just copy the original firmware, and maybe change here and there.

My main sound system is a Leak Delta 70 from the early 1970s. It was an absolute joy to work on and bring back to life, especially the turntable which is a rebadged Lenco with a wonderful drive system I'd never seen before. It uses an idler wheel (which is still the original, it hasn't perished like they often do in cheaper ones) on a cone-shaped rotor. The speed selector is a slide with little protrusions at 16, 33, 45, and 78 rpm which slides the idler wheel along the cone-shaped rotor. That means you can choose any speed between the common ones giving you pitch control way before that was common.

Despite being nearly half a century old and an uncommon design it was literally an afternoon to get it up and running again after it'd spent over a decade in my neighbour's garage. Ridiculously well made bit of kit.

On the other hand, I now have less things. I don't own a turntable anymore and no product replaced it. My phone has replaced tens of products which would have been dedicated devices before. Now I have one unrepairable phone that I replace every 4 years but thats probably less waste than buying things individually.

I was thinking about it the other day. We got a C64 Maxi (a full-sized C64 emulator) and my 8yo daughter loves some of the C64 games and was exploring a little bit the BASIC environment and realizing she can make a machine do her bidding by telling it what to do. I feel that screen time on it is far less worrying than on YouTube or Roblox.

I thought Roblox was a Minecraft-like with building aspects to it?

It's an open game similar in some ways to Minecraft, but the amount of pre-canned games means it's more likely for a kid to lazily consume rather than work towards creating. (In a way that's slightly worse than Minecraft, IMO.)

It does. While it is more powerful than Minecraft's creation side (and your child programming in Lua has an entrepreneurial motivation for Roblox bucks which translates to real dollars), the downside is that it feels more separate from Minecraft's creative side, which is baked into the gameplay itself

Roblox games tend to be stuffed full of microtransactions, which is really annoying as a parent because kids eat that stuff up.

Its hard to explain, but minecraft is more like an oliver postgate program like Bagpuss or the Clangers compared to one of the newer kids animated TV shows were stuff is exploding all the time.

Minecraft is a single game with the option of mods. Roblox is like a game marketplace with an engine where kids can make their own stuff and play each other's stuff (also microtransactions and the option for the kids to make money from said microtransactions).

Similar thing here. I even got a real C64C with games on floppies. My young daughter loves Giana Sisters, like me back in the days. Now a got another one. But with the fire button on port II defective. I repaired it on my own by replacing the according chip. What a great feeling. And the living retro scene is helping a lot! C64 forever!

Do they have corresponding books where you can type in the programs, building it progressively?

You can find tons of magazines from the 70's and 80's with programs at the archive.org website.

The 1541 was "vintage" even before it was released :)

Steve Woz in his biography talks about the uniqueness of his era, where you could know every single aspect of the machine you were working on — and how that let you squeeze every last drop out of it, often through really creative ways.

Thats still quite possible. Buy yourself an arduino board and the chip manual and you can know just about everything about it. Some slightly more sophisticated boards can even do video output and run modern programming languages while still not having an OS or complex firmware.

If anything its even easier now because its dirt cheap and there are hundreds of hours of tutorials available for free. And the arduino tools have removed a lot of the pointless complexity like telling your compiler what clock speed and revision your chip is.

> Buy yourself an arduino board and

Not quite. You are programming the Arduino, but you are using a vastly more complicated computer to do it. There is a lot of beauty in the simplicity of having a machine simpler than an Arduino and be able to, using nothing but it, get an interesting result.

I'm not sure it matters really other than nostalgia value. Its doubtfully more educational. And in any case, there are hobby kits where you can build a basic computer and program itself using the computer. Its all still around, only cheaper and more available. Its just not the _only_ option we have now.

The best thing about old school tech was a feeling of permanence. Pop a cassette out of the walkman, and it'll pick up where you left off.

If you wanted to make a mixtape, you had to record each song one by one in your CD-Cassette combo boombox. The last Walkman I owned was in 2001. After that it was all discman players and non-iPod MP3 players.

I still have relatively strong memories attached to each of them as they were permanent fixture on my person prior to smartphones arriving. I've tried to recapture it on my Neocities page here: https://bad-mood-rising.neocities.org/mp3.html

If it works and fits your needs then why not continue using it?

Imagine the world if most software developers were thinking like that in regard to their technology choices. That would've been a good world. A world where software uses hardware to its full potential.

I agree. After seeing demoscene and high performance computing, I refuse to accept "hardware is cheap, network is reliable" mentality, and using the latest and coolest stuff.

Even a small amount of extra effort in the correct places makes a lot of difference.

I still use Eclipse, btw.

On the other hand, if software makers kept using the same software, we'd still be programming in assembly, and play games in DOS :)

I meant more like using tools appropriate for the job. Hint: JavaScript and friends isn't anywhere near an appropriate technology choice for a desktop app. Assembly is inconvenient, unforgiving, and tied to a particular CPU architecture. Object-oriented paradigm is well-suited and stood the test of time for making GUIs for example.

And I don't mean stop inventing new things — I mean stop using stuff without understanding how it works under the hood. Stop embracing that kind of thinking and lowering the barrier to entry by wrapping everything into layers upon layers of "simple" abstractions and making it obscenely inefficient in the process. Stop "moving fast and breaking things". Stop making everyone think that software sucks, that that's its default state. I hate this "developer time is more expensive than machine time" saying. And there's no "premature optimization". Performance isn't a feature you can add at a later date whenever you feel like it — it's a function of the overall design of your product.

Also, I can't help but feel like most of programming these days happens for the sake of the process itself, and the resulting product is more of an unintended side effect.

> and play games in DOS

Not necessarily a bad thing tbh.

The other extreme to "move fast and break things" is "get extremely attached to your old ways". I don't think either is healthy. I'm sure that limiting software to only perfect diamonds of speed and security would raise barrier to entry enough that we would have missed out on some brilliant but inefficient ideas.

Where the healthy middle point lies is something I don't know.

I can now afford the high end tech of a bygone era which is leads to high end products that do not break as they have survived for over 30 years.

I love older high-end technology. For a couple of decades my stereo receiver was a Sony STR-7800SD. Absolute top of the line from the late 1970s, built like a tank, and component level repairable (the one time it needed fixing - a custom Sony part no less) parts were still available two decades after the thing was new.

Got it at a garage sale for a song in the early 1990s.

Given away since. I don't do stereo components any more, just listen with bluetooth headphones from a smartphone like everyone else.

>like everyone else

Believe it or not stereo systems are still frequently purchased even in 2021.

Right? My speakers are nearly thirty years old. My current set up, new, would be $30k, adjusted for inflation.

I am using vintage hard disk back ups of my files after I lost my research/work OneNote notebook due to the Amazing cloud-only design of the (Windows 10 / modern / metro or whatever they call it these days) OneNote app.

Never again.

Vintage tech does not track you, you don't have to sign up to manufacturer website in order to use it, you don't have to pay subscriptions. If something goes wrong, you can easily access schematics and often spare parts are still available (electronic components) and the build quality is often exceptional comparing to today's brittle devices made to be replaced within a year.

How can a lossy compressed minidisc be "cleaner" than a lossless CD or similarly lossy but higher bitrate and more efficiently compressed digital file?

It was mastered from a higher quality source? There could also be errors in the CD mastering, like setting the gain too high and chopping off the top of the song just to make the whole thing "louder". The digital files may have been taken from the CD since nobody can be bothered to go back and find the masters anymore.

> The digital files may have been taken from the CD since nobody can be bothered to go back and find the masters anymore.

All my music collection is FLAC files, bit-perfectly ripped from my CD collection. So, sure, they're digital files, compressed, but lossless. It is, for all practical purposes, just as good as a CD (as long as my external DAC is as good as the CD players' built-in DAC).

The original CD may have been badly engineered but that's another topic.

3 000 CDs fits in more or less 1 TB in lossless (but compressed) CD quality (just to give an idea of how tiny it is using modern storage standards).

Some people only use FLAC as archives but these files are so tiny in this day and age that I don't bother converting the FLAC to mp3s: I sent directly the bitperfectly ripped FLAC files to my DAC / stereo setup.

FLACs are better than CD quality.

CDs in a player always have errors. The errors are covered up by a couple of stages of error correction. One is a transparent CRC, the other drops the effective bit depth down to 12 or so bits.

The Block Error Rate (BLER) on CDs can be surprisingly high. So a CD in a player is always slightly compromised.

When you rip a CD with a good ripper the drive does multiple passes over problem areas until the results are consistent. The final file is bit perfect, except on very damaged CDs.

> One is a transparent CRC

You must mean CIRC. CRC in the context of errors is something completely different. CIRC offers pretty good error recovery, so except for bad scratches, CDs and FLAC (assuming it's also 16 bit, 44000 Hz) are identical.

The two issues you referenced are also applicable to minidisc.

MiniDisc doesn't brick-wall-compress the sound. Instead, it uses automatic gain to prevent clipping while recording from line-in. ATRAC encoding is also devoid of any compression.

MD players generally have VU meters, and you can observe your music, since they generally have recording functionality and used in studio and/or interviews, getting sound as transparent as possible is the aim.

Fun fact: Portable MD players are generally called "Portable MD Deck" by Sony to signal it's not a mere player but an audio equipment. Most MD decks contain indexing and primary tools for chopping a record to tracks and tagging them.

ATRAC is not devoid of compression. It's a lossy format which uses a crude form of spectral encoding - a bit like an MP3, but the model is less sophisticated.

There is a rare variant called ATRAC Advanced Lossless but it was never available on many devices.

Oh, I think I failed to tell what I'm trying to tell.

ATRAC is of course lossy and compresses the audio. The compression I mentioned was loudness maximizing/homogenizing compression which is used in mastering process, or in audio pipelines in general. So we can say that, ATRAC is devoid of any compressor stage which makes the resulting audio more loud by default.

That loudness maximizer/equalizer also called compressor so it's easy to misrepresent or write misinforming things when talking about both at the same time.

Sorry, my bad.

MiniDisc user here. It's for a couple of reasons.

First of al, ATRAC is a strange format. It's optimized for perception as far as I understood it. It doesn't color sound but can reproduce the dynamics and details very well. It's important to understand ATRAC has quality levels: SP, LP2, LP4. SP fits 80 minutes to a 80 minute MD. LP2 fits ~160 minutes, LP4 fits ~320. SP is extremely detailed and transparent. LP2 is really pretty good. LP4 is not good. Is not bad, but for listening on the move. It's not suitable for joy-listening on higher resolution systems. The deficiencies will be definitely heard.

This sound quality has another reason. The DSP/DAC combo on MD players itself. Earlier versions were called Type-R, improved versions are called Type-S. Latter one can reconstruct sound very impressively. It can make SP and LP2 sound really good. It also has a digital amplification section. So, It's only converted to analog at the latest stage. Result is a very dynamic and clean sound. Especially if you convert to ATRAC from CD or any lossless source.

My Hi-Fi (Sony CMT-HX3) also has a 35W version of that DSP/Amplifier combo. It really sounds fantastic* with CD, MP3 and AC3. Didn't try ATRAC, but it won't disappoint I presume.

Sony's higher end systems and DSPs are a work of art. They sound clean, crisp and detailed. They can sing through a pair of good headphones or through 2x85W behemoths. This is why they're timeless and regarded highly. With just Bass & Treble settings, it beats a lot of presumably higher end portable players.

A similar sound quality was present in Creative's Muvo^2. It was plain enjoyable to listen. Apple's iPods famously use Burr Brown DACs but, the sound was too flat and dull in the earlier versions, lacking punch and energy. They fixed it after iPhone 5.

TL;DR: Sony's DSP/DAC/Amp stuff makes any well designed audio codec shine. ATRAC can store dynamics very well. This is why being a Hi-Fi company pays in the portable space.

*: I have a more conventional, but vastly higher powered system. This small guy is not a match for it, but for a small hi-fi it really hits above its league. If you scale this design up (to 80+ watts) with proper speakers, I'm sure that it'll make a lot of more expensive systems sweat.

The DAC isn't part of the format; although I respect the desire for a good DAC. I believe all lossy compression codecs from the past 20 or 30 years are perception based; ATRAC may have been one of the first ones, but it sure doesn't beat a CD which has no loss at all, unless ATRAC/minidisc regularly used higher bit depths than are supported by CDs. The sample rate is already "perfect" (in that humans could never hear a difference)

You're right however, the DAC can make or break the resulting sound. If the DAC wouldn't be important, we wouldn't have Wolfson, TI Burr Brown or other extremely expensive units. Sony's DAC in this pipeline is like a polish. It doesn't blemish the sound after all that meticulous reconstruction.

On the paper and spectrogram, an SP ATRAC track is not a match for WAV or FLAC, however it has all the ingredients to saturate a high-resolution system and create an enjoyable listening experience. Also it had enough resolution to handle higher-end amateur mastering (in SP mode) and general recording needs (in SP and LP2 mode).

While 44.1KHz is perfect mathematically, 48KHz and 96KHz can create a smoother sound. That needs higher end equipment to hear clearly, but the smoothness is definitely there.

The guy who created the Vorbis codec explains why this really isn't the case and why high sampling rates with ultrasonics actually are bad for playback quality. https://web.archive.org/web/20120306150922/https://people.xi...

I would really encourage blind testing of one's assumptions about audio quality. Foobar2000 has this super nice ABX plugin that can handle automatic conversation to different codecs and or PCM sampling rates and depth from lossless sources. https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_abx

I can personally recognize full bitrate mp3 (this ancient codec maxes out at 320 kbps where it still sounds colored). This is a well-made pre-configured test https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/...

But move on to anything more modern than mp3, such as Apple's AAC encoder (there's a ton of bad AAC encoders out there) or Vorbis with VBR settings averaging at 256-320 kbps. You'll find it very hard to spot the lossy encodes in a blind test. Opus is astonishingly good at even lower bitrates.

Actually, here's an online ABX blind test set with several modern codecs at high bitrates, as well as the bad old mp3 garbage that ruined the reputation of lossy compression.

I really challenge you to reliably detect the lossy sample in the tests for Apple iTunes AAC ~256 kbps and Spotify high quality. http://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.html

> The guy who created the Vorbis codec explains why this really isn't the case and why high sampling rates with ultrasonics actually are bad for playback quality.

I'll take a look to it, thanks for the link. That sounds interesting.

> I would really encourage blind testing of one's assumptions about audio quality.

I'd gladly take an ABX test and stand corrected. digital feed's ABX test is pretty good but needs some quiet time to do it correctly. I'll try to find some time to take it. I tried but, it's not good when you don't have time.

> I can personally recognize full bitrate mp3.

It's possible to recognize some equipment (software or hardware) by ear because of its distinctive sound dynamics. I've listened a limited set of stuff (amplifiers, headphones, CD players, etc.) and can recognize each of them by ear. I think starting early and playing some instruments in groups help with ear training.

> But move on to anything more modern than mp3, such as Apple's AAC encoder...

The latest generation of encoders sound extremely transparent. You're right about it. It's a good thing actually. I'm not grumpy about not being able to brag about identifying the codec of the file I'm listening to. I just want to hear enjoyable, detailed, high resolution music. If my ears and brain are happy about what they're hearing, I'm happy.

The reason we have very expensive consumer DACs is that there are a lot of retired people who listen to music all day and have nothing better to spend money on.

48khz vs 44.1khz has the same sound quality in the human-audible range (maybe not if you're a dog); the actual reason DVD is 48khz instead of 44.1 is that it syncs up with 24fps frame rates better.

> The reason we have very expensive consumer DACs is that there are a lot of retired people who listen to music all day and have nothing better to spend money on.

After a certain point, yes. I'd personally wouldn't distinguish a %0.001 THD Burr Brown DAC and %0.0001 THD Burr Brown DAC in normal listening volumes with a good amplifier and set of good speakers. I inadvertently own both variants (one is in my CD player, the other is in my sound card).

However, being a former orchestra player, I assume I can hear a really bad DAC and a difference between 44.1KHz file and 48KHz file under some circumstances (like high detailed cymbals or other sounds in treble range). I'll happily stand corrected though.

Interesting, my Icom IC-7300 has burr brown DAC and ADC to interface with computers via USB. it's good to know it's considered pretty good THD.

This is getting into wooden volume knob territory, but MiniDisc did sound remarkably good compared to MP3 at the time.

None of this stuff is real unless you can pass an ABX test. I doubt it's real just reading it.

ATRAC is not optimized for anything that other codecs aren't (and technologically it's quite bad, especially compared to Opus but even compared to AAC). And there aren't magically better DACs any more than there are better power cables; they're all good enough as long as they're electrically compliant with your headphones.

> None of this stuff is real unless you can pass an ABX test. I doubt it's real just reading it.

That's of course fair. I can't ship you my MD player (that thing is priceless for me), but I can share a triplet of files for ABX testing. If you wish, I can do the following:

    - Rip a track from an album before loudness wars began to FLAC.
    - Rip the same track with Sony's own MD studio to ATRAC SP.
    - I can re-encode said ATRAC SP track to FLAC.
    - Ship you three files (A, B, X) where A is FLAC, B is ATRAC SP and X is either of one.

If that's OK for you, I can do it this weekend.

I'm not claiming anything or hoping for any outcome. My aim is to test, discuss and broaden my mental horizon. I've written these things by listening same stuff in many formats through the same audio pipelines (audio cards, Hi-Fi systems and speakers/earphones) for many years and, I instinctively know how every one of them behaves with any combination. Also, I've played in orchestras (big bands and symphonies), so my ear is somewhat trained to find nuances.

Making the some tests and discussing these things will only make me happy, and I'd gladly stand corrected.

Please post this! I’d love to take a listen with good headphones

For everyone interested in what I've told in the GP, can you please register via the form [0]. This Sunday took a different turn but, I don't want to leave this on the table.

Thanks.

https://forms.gle/miaP5zmefLxtBhNp7

Isn't ATRAC SP mode above 250 kbit/s? ATRAC3 is about as good as MP3 - probably worse because the encoder isn't tuned as well as LAME - but that rate is certainly high enough to sound acceptable.

It won't always be transparent so the ABX test should still be passable on extreme content, but it'll sound good enough. Anything else would also sound good enough though.

> Also, I've played in orchestras (big bands and symphonies), so my ear is somewhat trained to find nuances.

How's your high end hearing? It tends to go once you're not a teen…

> Isn't ATRAC SP mode above 250 kbit/s?

It can go up to 352kbps as Sonic Stage tells me. Will transfer one album to my MD player to see how it converts it to ATRAC. SonicStage rips your CDs to ATRAC3 Advanced Lossless by default and re-converts them to appropriate format for your device during "burning" it to your MD player. I'll use the files transferred to MD for ABX test.

> How's your high end hearing? It tends to go once you're not a teen…

I assume it's not bad. Can hear pretty silent stuff pretty well, including very high pitched adapter noise (not the capacitor whine, but the switching noise of the adapter itself, the one supposedly bothers dogs).

I used to record, in stereo, everyday life. i started with a 32MB smartmedia recorder, then to a cheap-ish compact flash recorder, to a minidisc "net" recorder - the audio i recorded with that netMD is still impressive to me, it feels like you're actually in the recording that i haven't ever replicated, even with the same microphone on other, more advanced devices like tascam dr-05 and the tascam quad channel, or even line in / mic on a computer, regardless of the sound card. I can go put a pair of headphones and a single AA battery into my MD device and be transported back to my college campus, a few of the industrial companies i worked at, the concerts/performances i was asked to record for friends, or even a small gathering/party/game night.

the only stuff i've heard that was recorded by amateurs that comes close (and possibly surpasses, depending on who's running the conversion / editing) is DAT recordings using the microphones shaped like a human head, for "perfect" stereo separation.

anecdotal, for sure, but the "compression" - ATRAC - was extremely good, especially at that time. I am aware that CDs have "no compression" on the data, so obviously DAT -> CD would sound better than MD -> CD, but this is my opinion.

Hipsters.

I've been buying older macbook pros and am pleasantly surprised how easy they were to repair and service.

They still are great machines today if your main usage is an ide, browser and video.

Don't get me wrong, I love my new mbp, but, I don't see any true difference in daily usage besides weight, and screen resolution.

I love the repairability of the old iMacs and Apple displays. When something got jammed in the disk drive, I was shocked at how easy it was to pull the glass off the screen (no tools, it's held on with magnets), and then remove the 8 or so Torx screws holding the screen on, unplug a couple of cables, and have full access to everything inside it. The downside is that those machines are all extremely heavy.

Stanford University Student Housing facility maintenance used to be one of the largest hold-out users of Apple Newtons, up until 2004-2005. Ask me how I know.

Edit: I drive an '85 VW Vanagon camper with the original 1.9L motor, fuel injection, and control system that lacks OBD2.

Good design is human centric, it serves the function of delivering meaning, added value and positive experience longterm. Todays designs are corporate centric, they convey "value for the consumer" but in actuality use legislation loopholes and design dark patterns to maximise corporate profits.

I drive classic cars (under 3k yearly) and every trip is a delightful. No distractions, no absence of control. Craftsmanship and quality of materials.

Driving Electric cars will be mandatory, I plan to convert my classic cars. No tracking, no data gathering and corporate overlords for me.

Psion 5 had one of the best tiny keyboards of all time. Amazing little device.

I still run my Carver stereo and Dahlquist speakers all day every day I bought back in 1981 or so. Connected to it is my Technics SLQ2 turntable I bought new in the disco era. But the only time I use that is to rip a vinyl, snap crackle pop and all. The stereo gets its signal from a LAN music server.

How you can write an article about old hardware without mentioning the C64 is beyond me.

Today there are more scene releases for C64 than for any other device, including PC.

AFAIC Apple 1 & 2 where just prototypes for the final 8-bit computer with SID (audio) and VIC2 (graphics) chips that blew everything else away until 16-bit!

It’s really hard to see an MP3 player from 2010 as “vintage technology in use” when there are PDP-11s still in use in nuclear power plants. Hell, I seem to recall there’s some plumbing company in the US that still uses a 1940s IBM electromechanical tabulator for their accounts.

>there’s some plumbing company in the US that still uses a 1940s IBM.

Maybe not to that extreme but you’d be surprised how many industrial machines still running on early OSes and even with CRT monitors. If it’s not broken don’t fix it.

Almost all of the equipment I've bought for SMT assembly is still Windows NT driven. I've got 2 Juki pick and place machines running Japanese DOS - built like a tank and never had issues.

The worst part is that NT will keep running forever and is significantly more reliable than today’s Windows 10.

I maintain a clutch of pre-iOS 7 devices to remind myself what good design was.

Agreed that iOS7 was a big UX downgrade. It went from being the only OS I'd be halfway-comfortable turning older tech-illiterate relatives loose on, to yet another OS that would leave them confused and lost much of the time. Discoverability and intuitiveness plummeted with 7.

I have quite a lot of vintage test and radio equipment. It’s cheap, completely dangerous and unreliable and fun to fix. I couldn’t be happier playing with it.

I have a lot of retro telecom equipment (mostly WAN line analyzers tbf) and I guess you could call a lot of it cheap, but a lot of it is curiously expensive too.

Very cool. There’s some of that curiously expensive stuff in here too. My oscilloscope and plug-ins cost about $70k new. I paid $200 for it :). It’s amazing that stuff I couldn’t afford I can now

I found my analog oscilloscope at a pawn shop for $40.

I'm always jealous of Americans, you just don't get scopes in the skip here (UK).

UK here. Mostly cancelled this year but best place to get scopes are radio rallies https://rsgb.org/main/news/rallies/

I think that's about what I paid for my analogue storage scope (it works by long-persistence phosphor on the tube, it's very neat though obviously not very practical these days; has a handful of valves in it as well as the CRT proper).

I had the pleasure of using a 35-50 year old high-pot tester when I worked for a rental company in the film industry.

It was horribly dangerous but still nobody seemed to get hurt.

Enough current to explode one’s innards in two wands you just go and touch ground pathways to make sure they don’t leak on high voltage/high current portable distribution terminals and lamps.

That job was a really fun experience.

He uses a Psion! OPL was my first programming language after basic!

I made some fun games in OPL. It was a really wonderful basic variant, perfect for the device.

Have a browse on /r/iPod. People love the iPod classics and the earlier generations in particular are becoming collectors items.

Is anyone making "vintage" tech on modern silicon process nodes? Then those AA batteries could last even longer.

After I been watching a ton of videos about retro-computing, mostly C64 and Amiga, I've been wondering if it would be possible to remake the custom Commodore/MOS chips. You can't get the original schematic and masks obviously, but the chips are pretty big by modern standards. Surely you could send a functional chip to China and have it reverse engineered.

You also don't need 5nm processing nodes to remake them, even a 130nm would be an improvement, and I have the feeling that even on 40nm there would be ample fabs able to make them.

It's probably more difficult than I imagine, and less efficient than just replacing the whole system with a FPGA.

Physicists still use those vintage laws of motion. I still use this vintage keyboard layout.

And these vintage A/C outlets and power cords.

Imagine if we had to rewire the house and all appliances with the frequency of USB connector changes!

One of my personal favorites. Practically a prehistoric "IoT" censor at this point. It needs access to your wifi and an email address. No apps, no flows, no unsupported platform nonsense.

https://www.amazon.com/Zircon-Leak-Alert-Contactor-Pack/dp/B...

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