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Old vs. New

I see a lot of threads on various audiophile forums that basically go like this: I sold my 5-6-10 year old speakers, amp etc. and bought new this or that and it kills the old stuff and sounds so much better.

I have listened to a lot of classic hi-end speakers, amps and preamps and also listen to a lot of FOTM stuff and to my ears a lot of the "old junk" sounds better, sometimes a lot better. Don't get me wrong a lot of the new gear on the market sounds very good.

So let me ask a question, why do so may people automatically assume that older gear sounds inferior to new stuff? Audio tech did not really changed that much in 10 y. We still have the same two ears now as we did 10 y ago? If something was good 10 years go why is it no good now?
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shadorne's avatar
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shadorne
7,477 posts
 
It just shows how gullible we all are. Only sometimes new is better.
kr4's avatar
kr4
3,703 posts
 
Shadorne wrote: It just shows how gullible we all are. Only sometimes new is better.

I agree but, to be clear, only sometimes old is better.

Kal
isochronism
2,893 posts
 
I'm going to try that as my new pick-up line....
marakanetz's avatar
marakanetz
5,473 posts
 
Pro Sound:
I can say that when you enter the movie theater the sound now is much better than 25 years ago. Powerful live sound equipment for the concerts is much more superior to the 10 and 20 years ago.
The recording equipment? Well, it's much more simplier to maintain but not any better than 25 years ago. Since the recording quality might suffer vs. before, I would less-likely believe to superiority of new remasters.
Home Audio:
As to electronics/speakers you can go to Best Buy, Sears, Target, Walmart to get some PRC made set up from source to speakers or you can go to specialized dealers, make a careful choice and get a quality products for substantially higher price. Before that there weren't too much of PRC products that were available in the major stores. The quality of the cheap vintage stuff was much better and most of mid-fi stuff from the past much more superior to the one nowdays.
onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
5,273 posts
 
Old is the new new. Or is it new is the old new? New is the new old? Anyway, I once read a story about how back in the mid-60s the engineers at Motown records swapped out all their tube Neumann microphones for the brand new transistor models. They knew they sounded different, but they loved the fact that the transistor mics sounded the same from one hour to the next, something that was a real problem for the tube mics. Flash forward to the beginning of the 21st century and tube microphones are back in vogue and selling better than ever. Sometimes it's not a question of new being better, but just being different.

An interesting proposal is to take the classic old designs and update them with newer (and demonstrably better) parts. There would have to be some adjustments, but I suspect that these designs would compare most favorably to modern products.
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