[sdiy] obsoletism, was: favorite "magical" op amp

[Steve Carter]

It's all very subjective and difficult to know where to draw the line.  A sound irrespective of how it was created gets embedded in the brain and that becomes the reference from that point on. Examples of that are everywhere both in the creation of music itself and in the apparatus used to record and play it back. I love the sound of an old jukebox and the reason I like it isn't necessarily because it's a high fidelity sound but my initial exposure to that sound as a boy sometime in 1961 set that as a reference.  It was better than the old radio we had at home because it had more bass and was a lot louder so it didn't get any better than that.  Maybe someone with plenty of money in 1961 had a hi-fi system at home and the sound of the jukebox to that person would have probably been seen as rather crude. I built an all digital hard disk based jukebox in the early nineties and it sounded technically much better than any of the vintage types but to my ears it wasn't quite the same - not because it was digital but because it didn't match the 'DNA' of the jukebox sound my brain has stored as a reference.

I think the same applies to synth sounds. My earliest memories of synthesiser sounds are of Curved Air's Francis Monkman on his VCS3, the sounds generated by the BBCs Radiophonic Workshop by mainly EMS gear and the Walter Carlos 'Well Tempered Synthesiser' album multitracked with a Moog modular. Those various synthesiser sounds for good or bad are the ones that my brain has set as a reference and there is a subconscious process that turns the knobs until one of those sounds emerges!

I love to restore old electronics but I won't keep anything in there that's become faulty just for the sake of originality. If using a modern component changes the characteristic of the sound then I won't use that either.  I'm not sure that the subtle differences in the way op-amps sound is a cause for concern though.

One thing is for sure though - I don't want to live in the past - it's important that we create new sounds and methods to add to the 'DNA' so that we can move forward because that is the only thing that matters.

Steve



On 7 Oct 2010, at 11:46, Senso wrote:

> Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way, but to me it doesn't have the "classic analog sound" anymore when it's parts are deteriorated. That has been replaced by something called "old, deteriorated sound" and it should be fixed. Why spend time trying to make something sound old and dying???
> Would you want to simulate a rattling gear box and a wheezing belt drive to give your car that "classic sound"? Or apply some rust for a "vintage" look? ;-)
> 
>> I think it would be interesting to think about how ageing, 30-year-old
>> parts in synth circuits can be simulated with new parts. Then do an
>> analysis of something like that translated onto some vcf or vco that
>> has "classic analog sound", but only because it's gotten old and the
>> parts have deteriorated.