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Comment by zwieback | Hacker News Reader

I had a Pioneer A9 amp back in the day and I loved it. All analog, massive non-switching power supply, nice sound out of my Revox speakers.

However, the golden age of audio is right now and tomorrow will be platinum. Everything else is nostalgia.

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Ironically, being a music producer myself, a whole bunch of the things in my mastering FX chain are intended to simulate the inaccuracies of analogue equipment that, by happy accident, enrich timbre with warmth through mild saturation, with sparkling high end by emphasising upper harmonics.. I have a whole cavalcade of painstakingly simulated tube amps and preamps, old analogue compressors/mixers/EQs, tape machines, delay plugins that simulate the artefacts of old bucket-brigade chips and the warbling of tape delay systems. Professionals and studios would have 10x as many doodads to, technically-speaking, fuck up the accuracy of the sound in some way.

Today's audio production makes production in the 70s look like it was made with bubble gum and bailing wire. Then again, they were litterally making stuff up. Taking things apart, rewiring, tying together things not normally together.

People today just get to re-create things digitally using the things from the previous times as a basis. The folks making the originals had no basis, and just made shit up as they went.

I chatted with a dude in the 90s who was into making guitar pedals; almost exclusively weird distortions. He collected fucked up electronics and hunted for damaged transistors specifically, to the point of microwaving / cooking / soaking new ones to see what new properties he could give them.

"throw it at the signal and see what it sounds like" but he did get some unique and cool effects.

True... today there is lossless streaming in abundance and speaker systems that are very good for a reasonable price. I bought some bose home speaker today for my office and its amazing how good they sound.... and I got one of those "high end" systems at home.

Yeah - having grown up in the era the author describes I agree. Audio today sounds better and is far, far cheaper than it was back in the day. It's fun to reminisce but I wouldn't go back.

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