Dr. Koss’ Corner: It’s the Stickee!

September 9th, 2010 by Janice Brown

At a hockey tryout, more years ago than I care to remember, my A-game had decided to stay home and I was quite frustrated with how bad I was playing. I went back to the bench to swap out my stick, and the red-necked coach, surely named Bubba, spat out his tobacco and said, “It ain’t the stick that is the problem – it is the stick-ee.”

The doctor is in...

That little pearl has stuck with me ever since and seems to be more and more relevant today. What is this year’s latest and greatest will be out of date and somehow unusable in a blink of an eye. Case in point – converters.

An AD8000 used to be the end-all be-all, and with a price tag of around 10K, how could it not be? Now, less than 10 years on, it goes for less than a grand on ebay, and is considered to be a redheaded dinosaur since it doesn’t go above 48K. What about the fact that it still sounds amazing and that most people don’t need to go above 48K anyways? (Pay no mind to the man behind the curtain.)

More than once, I’ve endured marathon microphone demos, only to hear the familiar lament, “this doesn’t sound right for my voice” or, “this doesn’t cut through the mix.” Surely, this can sometimes be the case. However, more often than not, it is the stickee, not the stick.

Confronted with this, I am often reminded of a good friend who has a G4 (running OS9), a 001 with a pretty old version of PT, a MiniMe and a C414. With this “ancient” rig, he still makes the most interesting, musically fresh and great sounding recordings that I’ve heard from a project studio.

And then there are computers. How can it be that the sexiest, most amazing computer can look so old and frumpy so fast? Relatively speaking, a titanium G4 laptop isn’t that old, and after recently encountering one, I felt like I had found a relic from the 80s. As an experiment — imagine yourself in a room with all the computers you’ve ever owned stacked up around you. Bearing in mind that these are each well-packaged environmental nightmares — both to create and destroy — it certainly gives one pause when deciding whether or not that next upgrade is really necessary.

Now, before you chase me up the tree I was just hugging, keep in mind that I am the guy that deals the crack (or this case hockey sticks?). Financially speaking, I would be better off encouraging every upgrade and stringing along each gear slut for their next fix. For better or for worse, I’d rather see people focus on performances instead of purchases. Get a good setup and then get busy. Keep what you have as long as you can. Reggie Watts recently tweeted, “Limitations are the key to innovation.” Anyone that has seen or heard his music knows he is on to something.

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