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audiophiles or retrophiles

As I read the posts on Audiogon with their gushing about the warmth of tubes, vinyl, horns, older technology, it seems there is a reversion. New bad, old good. Solid state bad, tubes good. Digital bad, analog good.

I expect a return of the wind-up gramaphone with catus stylus. No electricity to sully the sound and a natural material used to read the grooves. Must be good!

How many audiophiles are actually retrophiles?

But then again, many refer to their audio systems as a hobby, rather than as a means to the end of listening to music. As such, the care of analog tape with its fragility (head alignment, avoiding print through), matching of output tubes, cleaning vinyl and worrying about tracking forces, and so forth are activities that a hobbiest might enjoy. So much more opportunity to demonstrate expertise than merely turing on solid state electronics and putting a CD in a drawer. So much more lore. So much more mystic.

db
donbellphd
psag
518 posts
 
You're welcome!
akg_ca's avatar
akg_ca
2,270 posts
 
"...The bottom line remains that analog is still the superior format. Game, set, match..."

That statement is only an anecdotal heavily biased personal value judgement --at best-- of that singular author ...But it is not shared by a large chunk of this forum audience, and therefore needs no further attention .... Full stop
oregonpapa's avatar
oregonpapa
4,867 posts
 
I spent Saturday and Sunday this past week at the Newport Audio Show. While there, my friend Robert and I visited one room of many that was solely using a digital servers hooked up to the room's operator via laptop. The conversation came around to a discussion of vinyl records vs digital downloads. The person demonstrating the room told us that he had downloaded 4000 records from his collection onto his hard drive. My friend Robert asked him how he spent his Saturdays. His response was ... "downloading my records." Robert said ... "well that's nice. I spend my Saturdays hitting garage and estate sales looking for more records." I asked him how he'd organized his downloads. His response was: "I've hired a college kid for fifteen dollars an hour to organize my hard drive and server." This whole time I'm thinking ... WTF? I have over 5000 records and probably 2000 CDs. There is no way I'm going to take the time to download all of this. I'm too busy listening to music.

The digital system demonstrated did sound good though. In fact, most of the rooms using downloads sounded good. A couple even sounded great. But the best sounds at the show came from analog rigs. At least to my ears.
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