Op Ed: Three Reasons Audio is Stuck in the Past

Is the audio industry too obsessed with nostalgia?

What are your most coveted pieces of audio gear?

For many engineers, key vintage units like 1073s, U47s, and Fairchilds (or is it “Fair-children”?) would probably make it to the top of the list.

Yes, they all sound great, but they also have something else in common: They’re old. In fact, the older they are, the more we’ll often pay.

Today, there are plenty of other ways to get by in audio without maxing out your credit cards on these historic pieces.

Sure, a decade ago, digital emulations couldn’t hold a candle to their authentic counterparts. But we’ve come a long way since then. In a world where a $100 plugin is within a few degrees of quality of a celebrated piece of vintage gear that costs thousands of dollars, why are we still so obsessed?

I’m just as guilty as anyone of scouring the internet to find the most expensive vintage pieces of gear and thinking, “if only I had that, things would be so much better”. It’s an obsession.

Our love affair with real vintage gear comes in part from a love of collecting, and in part from the assumption that getting our hands on the right old pieces of gear going to advance our craft.

But deep down, every engineer knows that the latter just isn’t true. So why do we do it anyway?

Love of the Past

This kind of obsession with the past is not unique to audio. It’s a phenomenon that applies to all aspects of life, especially among creatives, and it’s certainly not new. In the 1920s, dozens of American writers fled to Mexico in search of “lost authenticity”.

In audio, this is way of thinking is especially pervasive: The perception is that vintage gear—and older music—holds some sort of authenticity, richness, and purity of spirit and sound that is missing today.

There’s an argument to be made that older manufacturing processes, the limited numbers of tracks and takes, and the clunkier, more deliberate recording process of yesteryear can all lead to a better product.

But that’s largely a fallacy. The progress we’ve seen in audio doesn’t make music any less creative or authentic in and of itself. Sure, it allows us the ability to do inauthentic work more cheaply, more quickly and in greater quantity if we are inclined to, but it doesn’t guarantee that our work will come out that way.

Can “New” Mean “Authentic” Too?

Let’s take a look at other industries: There’s little cry left in the film industry, for example, that the progress in cameras and the editing process is making movies and TV shows worse or less “authentic”.

Those last few holdouts who shoot on film are part of a shrinking minority, and their industry is very much embracing of new technology that pushes the craft forward. At the end of the day, the product is still just capturing and presenting images and stories.

Do those images get any more expressive and authentic simply when they are harder to make, thanks to retro technology? Or does the newfound affordability and ease of workflow make it even more possible to capture candid and authentically spur-of-the moment images when that is what’s desired?

The same type of quick acceptance of cutting-edge technology can be seen in the visual arts: Graphic designs, painters, and illustrators overwhelmingly have a copy of Photoshop and a drawing tablet at their disposal. When it comes to making a commercial product for others to enjoy, there’s little argument about how graphite and colored pencils are somehow better than digital art.

In both of these fields, there has been a ready embrace of new technology. Even in the audio broadcast and post-production industries, there is a greater and more ready acceptance of the new than there often is in music production.

This leads to a synchronous relationship between professionals and product manufacturers that pushes the envelope of what’s possible and, arguably, brings the quality of the art up overall.

But what does the studio world have? The products that really push the envelope are few and far between, with the innovations in quality mainly seen in converters and the odd next-gen plugin.

Instead, we often get a rehash of vintage hardware products that are cheaply made so we can finally afford them, eventually sell them on eBay, and still covet the “real deal” vintage gear that we may never own.

Authenticity comes from your hands, your head and your ears, not from a piece of gear that has become personified and deified over the decades.

Yes, there are fair arguments to be made in favor of high quality vintage gear. Yes, the exact manufacturing processes of yesteryear aren’t always possible today due to safety issues and lack of certain resources. And yes, there is something to be said about how those idiosyncrasies affect the sound.

Still, it doesn’t make much sense to obsess. Too many in our industry are willing to spend thousands of dollars to repair a vintage piece of gear that only works half the time, but write hate mail when a plugin has an intermittent bug.

Think of how far off those values are from reason:

There is often more hate directed at a $100 plugin that allows you to get within a few degrees of a vintage piece of gear when it exhibits a slight bug—that will likely be patched within a few days for free—than there is at old gear that constantly needs major and expensive repair, and can only be used for a few months before breaking down yet again.

In many ways, we’ve got it better than ever. So why don’t we act like it?

Reason #1: Nostalgia Goggles

The decisions we make in the creative world aren’t based purely based on logic and reason of course. (I’m not sure they really are in any part of the world for that matter.)

Research does show that many of our purchases are made out of an emotional response rather than a rational one. In any industry, our sense of nostalgia can drive a lot of revenue. And it’s no secret that music especially can trigger tremendous levels of nostalgic feeling.

You know that song you were listening to when you first got in your car at age 16, or when Sally McGee first kissed you. For these reasons, the tracks we discover in our teens and early twenties are the ones we inevitably consider “best” as we age, even though that isn’t necessarily true on any objective level.

For audio people, this effect is pushed even further back through the production chain: Through our nostalgia goggles, we perceive older, more familiar songs as being better, and thus, their productions as “better” as well. While nerding out over our favorite records, we make a point to figure out the gear that was used and make the logical association that the unique quirks of the gear must be part of the reason for the emotional response that these songs gives us.

We listen not only to the music; we listen to the impact of the finished production and consider everything that went into it. When you first heard that song, the crack of the snare or the smoothness of the lead vocal is part of what hooked you. That initial impact had nothing to do with the knowledge that the snare was smashed through a Distressor or the vocal being recorded on a U47 with an LA2A. That information came later.

The most interesting thing is that in audio, the emotional responses of older generations is cycled in to younger generations. One generation comes to love and praise a piece of gear, and new engineers read and hear that praise and figure that praise is justified.

Unfortunately for us, the emotional response we have to working with a particular piece of gear is not passed on to the end consumer. Their emotional response is their own to form.

They don’t know what gear we used, and usually don’t care. That information just isn’t part of the equation. Our job is to make a quality piece of music so that they can connect with it in whatever way they see fit.

Reason #2: Identity

If there’s something like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in audio, then having sufficient gear to get the job done sits somewhere near the bottom of the pyramid. So let’s continue on up toward the top: “Self-actualization”.

Believe it or not, but the gear we use and love is wrapped up in how we view and understand ourselves. That’s a bold claim, so let’s break it down:

It’s hard to deny that gear is often tied to status. One way engineers attempt to gauge success, or to cement their place in a diverse industry, is through the gear they own or use.

Older gear helps lend a certain identity to the engineer, and creates a perception competence, of monetary, and perhaps even creative, success in the industry.

Owning that gear—even if it’s rarely used—gives the impression that the engineer somehow understands how to harness the historic power of it.

While that is true in some cases, you’ll also find many producers and engineers at the top of the game who own extremely old and expensive pieces of gear that they rarely, if ever, use. In part, they’re conversation pieces.

It turns out that they are conversation pieces not just for our external conversations, but for our internal ones as well.

In 2008, a study conducted by the University of Leeds in England explored narrative accounts based on personal memory and how that ties to one’s identity. Much as was the case with our favorite music, they found that the memories we draw on most often in telling our own stories to ourselves are the ones we form between the ages of 10 and 30.

This means that the memories and allegiances that we form in our early working years tend to factor heavily into the personal narrative we create for the rest of our lives. Our “autobiographical memory”, as it’s called, is directly linked to our life’s goals and ambitions.

So, having the “right” gear helps us audio guys to feel fully actualized. Our coveting of older gear may begin with nostalgia, but it is more than that. It is built up by our personal narrative, and often tied right into the very core of our identity. Owning the “right” pieces of gear often justifies our goals, and gives a nice indicator that we have achieved at least some of them.

Reason #3: Investment Demand

One often-overlooked point is that some studio owners buy vintage gear not only because they want to use it, or just because their identity is wrapped up in it, but because it may make financial sense to them as well.

If a studio owner has substantial profits one year, sticking that money into the bank can be a double-whammy against their bottom line: First, they have to pay taxes on any profit they keep. And secondly, habitually sticking that profit into the bank can mean losing purchasing power to inflation over the years.

By buying vintage gear instead, a studio owner can get two things: An honest tax deduction (because these are tools of the trade), and a collectible asset that could hold its value over time better than a depreciating currency can.

To be fair to vintage gear that has stood the test of time, it is probably more likely to hold its value over the next 20 years than the hottest new plugin, the fastest new computer, or the most compatible new interface. This kind of collectible investment and tax-deduction demand helps keep values high. Even if the gear is rarely used in practice.

Most new studio owners however, aren’t in a position where it makes sense to maximize their deductions by buying up vintage collectible audio gear. That is especially the case when they have lower-hanging fruit available, like upgrading their rooms, marketing their businesses, or otherwise expanding the basic and essential capabilities of their studios.

Wrapping it Up

After all that, you may think I absolutely detest rare, vintage, or just expensive gear in general. That’s not the case.

There is something to be said about the subtle differences, the workflow it can encourage, or simply the “vibe” associated with it.

Some gear will help you get better results. Even going past the point of diminishing returns still gives some return.

That extra two percent can sometimes push a production over the edge. However, most of the time, the engineers working with that gear are already operating at 100 percent, and would be if they had the gear or not.

Technology has come a long way, in all aspects of life, and particularly in audio. Entire movies can be scored without a musician touching a single instrument, with results that most listeners wouldn’t be able to discern.

That is the current state of music production. The best option is to fully embrace that progress and change, and perhaps, give the modern a unique spin with a touch of gear from the past.

Jacob Roach is a writer, producer, and engineer from St. Louis, Missouri.

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