After going on for way too long about physical media, a couple of news articles crossed my bow today that I’d like to record for posterity.
The first one from the BBC asks why vintage audio equipment is booming and talks about how people are seeking out old audio gear because it was built to last and far more repairable than devices today.
He says people are restoring old audio gear they’ve bought on platforms such as Ebay. “Things were certainly built better back then, and are much more repairable than the latest equipment.”
One of the big problems with internet-connected devices is they have an inherent shelf-life that ends when the manufacturer decides, not when the hardware gives up the ghost. CD players, record players and even cassette players don’t have that problem.
Personally I’m longing for the day when MiniDisc starts to boom again.
The second article from the FT which is unfortunately paywalled, written by Sarah O’Connor postulates that we’ve given up quality by trading it for convenience.
If hundreds of millions of normal music listeners (like me) have decided to trade audio quality for convenience and variety, then fair enough. But what disconcerted me is that I didn’t know that’s what I’d done. I had simply forgotten how much better music used to sound.
The problem youngsters are going to have is they may never know how much better music could sound, if they don’t realise Spotify is hot garbage. CDs still sound much better than most streaming services.