08/12 EDITORIAL: THE END OF "RETRO"?

(Every month or so, a new editorial is posted in Sound, Studio, and Stage. Your comments and feedback are encouraged!)

THE END OF "RETRO"?

By Craig Anderton

In this very forum, there's a thread on vinyl. Another one on why amps sims can't replace physical amps. We've also had our share of "tape good, DAWs bad" threads.

Yet the CD was supposed to deliver us from the pops, scratches and wear of vinyl; few would dispute that it's a far more robust medium. Amp sims provide a level of flexibility, and value, that's simply not possible with hardware. And tape? I think all would agree that tape is a signal processor that can enhance certain types of music, yet it's prone to hiss, tape stretching, mechanical issues, and so on.

So why is the world fascinated with retro? Answer: It isn't. All of those things never really went away.

I think the bottom line is that in today's world, there's really no such thing as "retro" because everything remains current. Tubes never disappeared totally, and thanks to DJs, neither did vinyl. "Dark Side of the Moon" still sells as if it had been released a couple years ago, not in the early 70s. Les Pauls and Strats, despite being decades only, remain desirable guitars - and they never went away either.

Of course, individual products don't always stand the test of time: Anyone still computing with a Sinclair ZX81? But when you zoom out and look at the big picture, it seems that these days, we have fewer fads that appear, peak, then disappear. The model appears to be more like that of an ADSR envelope: Something appears, peaks, then falls back to a sustain level. And if there is a release, it's really long.

We're in the unique position of being able to enjoy the best of the past, the best of the present, and even cross-pollinate the two. And if the past never really leaves the present, can we really consider it "retro"?

So, you mean to tell me this whole "retro" thing was just some marketing lingo?!

Can we get two cents in here or what?!

Look, people. I know reading is retro and all, but it's not just a fad.

I was thinking over in one of those other threads about how I pimp for tape all the time and meanwhile push my daw to it's limits daily.

True "retro" trendiness is to use digital and advocate for tape.

True "retro" trendiness is to use digital and advocate for tape.

Yes, you get what I'm talking about...retro never left. These days it doesn't die, it just evolves

MXR Phase 90: $250.00.

I want 8 1/2 x 11 newsprint paper for printing out online news stories.

I'm releasing my next record on wax cylinders to be played on hand cranked music players.

That's retro, baby!

As a moderator of a hi fi forum, I can tell you that the number of audiophiles who play vinyl records is increasing. Recordplayers like Thorens are very popular and prices are exploding.

Retro? A Volkswagen Beetle from the fifties does

Craig, I think it's a number of things. Audiophiles state that the vinyl version sounds better, nicer hi end and a bigger 'soundstage'. But they are not aware of the difference in mastering between a CD and a vinyl production.

My son says when he listens to a vinyl record, he's really listening and when he plays the CD of the very same recording, he's thinking about his work of the dishes that needs to be done. He just bought this beautiful player and a mint Marantz PM94 amp (2*380wtt @ 2 ohm) and a pair of very nice sounding TDL transmissionline speakers. And i must say it sounds really awesome.

I'm glad I kept all of my hundreds of vinyl records. I have a special room for listening and I don't even have a CD player there, only a vinyl record player and an old Sony V-Fet amp that sounds wonderful. In our livingroom we have a 5.1 setup that almost never gets used, only for watching movies on DVD every now and then.

But to be very honest, many vinyl records sound quite crappy and suffer from hiss and crackle/pops. But it has some 'soul', like an old reel to reel machine, looking to those big reels, spinning round and round makes me feel happy.

Edit: look at this.

I guess that begs the question - "does retro require (passing and) resurrection? or the arrival of newer options designed to be used in a similar context? or something else (maybe related to user perspective)?"

Of course, individual products don't always stand the test of time: Anyone still computing with a Sinclair ZX81?

actually yeah, there are still communities

choose a platform and you'll find folks that still do-- kinda funny those little beasties were featured in "Pattern Recogniton" by William Gibson

Now, an interesting thing about that is how the use model, perceived benefits and flaws, etc may change over time...so I suppose there might be a "retro" there, how our interpretation of a thing (device, technique, etc) changes...maybe something akin to (or an extension of) a Rogers product diffusion curve

Craig, the problem I have with nostalgia is that by now, many of these people never even experienced recording to tape at all... ever. And the fraction of the people on this forum who have heard their own recordings played back on vinyl is absolutely tiny.

So what you have -- and this ties into your thought -- is a yearning for something NEW, rather than something old. It's new in that it's something else to experience, just like high-resolution digital recording was when it came out. The promotion of this "new" type of recording is done via the remaining old-timers who wax poetic about how good things used to be, and it's completely understandable why a guy who's never heard this before has his curiosity piqued.

My feeling is that you're right in that these things never went away. But living in the world of reality, despite the "good old days" talk, most people can't afford to use these older tools and technologies purely from a price standpoint. The fact is that it's a LOT more expensive and time-consuming to do analog recording. The machines are expensive, the media is expensive, and the time it takes to assemble modern-style recordings via analog editing is expensive in its own way too.

So while you claim it never went away, it really did for all intents and purposes for the widespread group of people who enjoy recording, as a hobby or for a living. From a practical view, it's already in the same school as those people in car clubs who enjoy driving their Model Ts to a car show on a Saturday. It's probably fun, but ultimately to drive to work every day, people need Honda Accords and Toyota Camrys, and most people don't have the luxury of using these tools that are obsolete from a standpoint of practicality.

There's a funny saying abt nostalgia.."fond rememberances of things that didn't happen"

I think this ties in with what I was thinking (though probably didn't express well, gee that's unusual ) about the rogers curve (that's the curve with "innovator, early adopter, laggards and all that) in that perhaps "retro" is more a function of the product life-cycle and where people are in relation to that

I think what craig was saying about tape being used as an effect we can apply as opposed to an artifact of another process (recording itself) that comes along if we don't have options

In one case, we are applying it as we wish, in another we are navigating it

eh, I don't really have a point, just some musings

To my mind, there's retro for kitsch or novelty sake, then there's classic. A work of popular culture that inspires devotion or respect is often called a classic.

Levi blue jeans. Are they retro? No, they're not. They're classic. Are the standard Wayfarer Ray Bans retro? I don't think so. How about a Les Paul? I have a hard time seeing an Airline guitar as a classic. That's retro to me. It's cool, but it's appeal is more novelty.

Is Citizen Kane retro? No. How about Plan Nine? Yes! Tubes. Tele. Fender Twin. Mustang. White Tee. All classic to me.

Is recording through a cone to get an old timey sound retro. I think so. Is recording to tape retro? That's classic.

Excellent point - the differentiation between kitsch and classic. When you look at what I said through that lens, I was considering more the classic end of things that the kitsch.

Only if it comes with chicken-head knobs.

Thankfully, I'm one of them. A lot of hardcore bands I've recorded in the past released their stuff on vinyl. Very cool to hear your own recordings on vinyl!!!!

Maybe they get it through tape saturation plugins.

Playing vinyl is like driving a car with a manual transmission... you have to pay attention to it and that can sometimes be a good thing.

CD's or mp3's on endless shuffle and repeat quickly become background noise while needing to flip or change the record frequently makes you have to think about it more and make decisions about what you are listening to.

Excellent points, which leads me to think that maybe one reason that vinyl sounds better to people is that they've put more effort into choosing something that will please them...and therefore, they're more pleased.

So, you mean to tell me this whole "retro" thing was just some marketing lingo?!

Pretty much, yeah.

But Craig isn't talking about "nostalgia." He's talking about people who have never really stopped using older technology (or have recently discovered and used it) and therefore it's not "nostalgia" at all to them/us. It's just what we use.

And sure, there are some people who "advocate" for things like tape and have never used it, but again, that's not who Craig is talking about.

Well actually a lot of younger folks' favorite records were recorded on tape, so they HAVE heard it. And it's fine if they get their curiosity piqued enough to try it. Why not let 'em listen for themselves and decide what they like as opposed to accepting whatever they've been using to that point? I've seen a lot of younger folks myself experience using tape and a nice console for the first time, and their eyes light up. I find it bizarre this notion that the only reason this happens is because a bunch of older people have told them it's "supposed" to happen. Young people have never given a {censored} what older people think about these things.

The key being "modern-style recordings." If that's what you want - that is, if digital editing and effects are absolutely necessary to your style of production - then you're right. If you're a bunch of musicians playing together in a room and you want to record that, then I'd have to disagree. It takes a lot LESS time to get good sounds and good workflow in an analog room, in our estimation. So the overall process is not expensive.

And I certainly hope nobody ever thinks the idea of musicians playing together in a room is "retro." Not to say there's no other way to record, but certainly that hasn't gone away and hopefully never will.

Completely disagree that it's anything like the car show. I don't think many people who own a model T are using it as a daily driver or wish they would be made again as daily drivers. But plenty of people who use analog and buy vinyl do. They're using it not because they want to preserve some arcane technology, but because they prefer the sound and/or the process. It's still very practical to them in other words.

Also, just because I can't afford something or it isn't practical for me for whatever reason, doesn't mean I can't admit that it's better quality than what I use. There are a lot of high quality things that I can't afford and/or can't invest the time to use properly. That doesn't mean I can't respect people who do. Yet people act like anyone who prefers analog nowadays is like one of those self proclaimed golden ear types who pays $500 for wooden knobs on their stereo. It's bizarre.

Look, during the 70's amp manufacturers tried to kill tube amps, too. You were "supposed" to like solid state amps better, because it was "the new thing" and they were cheaper, more reliable (supposedly), lighter weight, etc. than tube amps. However, they sounded like poo and a lot of guitarists just refused to use them. And of course were accused of being retro and old-time and impractical.

And of course, over time solid state amps got better, and didn't sound so much like poo. But tube amps still thrived. For awhile good ones became harder to find, and it was feared that tubes would be hard to find eventually. But guitarists persisted in using those "antiquated" tube amps every day, over the same accusations that the amps were expensive (true), heavy (true), hard to maintain (sometimes true), etc. and certainly very few people today question the viability of tube amps or call them "retro." Some people may prefer SS amps or modelling devices, but the tube amp industry is thriving again and guitarists can all be happy no matter what kind of amplification we prefer.

And that is Craig's point - you can now do whatever you want and it's silly to call any of it "retro." There is still a thriving analog community and a thriving vinyl community, in spite of some people's insistence that these are "dead" or "impractical" technologies. And eventually, more manufacturers may well create products that cater to this community and make some of these technologies easier to own and maintain. Just like you can now buy more kinds of new tube amps than you ever could in their supposed heyday, right alongside all the POD's and everything else out there. And they could have been doing that all along instead of trying to dictate to musicians what they "should" be using now.

Not only that, but while they might not have a great turntable, they usually aren't listening on little computer speakers or earbuds, and get comfortable after they put a record on.

It's also nice to be able to look at the jacket and notes.

For me it's the physical nature of analog.

Things are doing things to things.

I like seeing that needle in the groove, I like watching those big Ampex 2" reels spinning around, I like to watch those tubes glow.

Digital is like - I don't know, like smoke and mirrors, or something.

I for some odd reason, because I cannot see those ones and zeros, I tend to not want to trust it. It seems slightly disingenuious.

I love the convenience, but it's missing the soul.

So today, two records show up in the mail: "Puzzle" and "Medium," re-issues by a Spanish company of albums put out by my band Mandrake back in the 60s. But when I say records, I mean records: 12-inchers with the original Milton Glaser covers, and - something we didn't have back in the 60s - 180 gram vinyl.

The company did a really great job, but they did it not as nostalgia - they felt the music still holds up, and they did it on vinyl because, well, the originals were on vinyl and that's the way they were supposed to be heard.

But personally, I'd rather put them out as CDs with me doing the re-mastering because unlike the people who listened to our albums, I heard what they sounded like in the studio and it was NOT the same as what came out on vinyl. The bass and frequencies above 10kHz were rolled off as part of the mastering process, and because Puzzle had a really long run time, it was a "quiet" album because you just can't pack loud grooves into an album that long. So, it was compressed quite a bit, and the surface noise added a lot to the tape hiss, to the detriment of the listening experience (at least in my opinion).

So, what do those albums REALLY sound like? What they sounded like on vinyl, or what they sounded like in the studio? To everyone else, the former. To me, the latter. And someday, I hope to restore those albums to what they really sounded like on playback in the studio monitors, without the limitations of the media of those times. And of course, someone who hears it might say "Wow, that Anderton guy ruined the sound with his mastering! It sure doesn't sound like what I remember!"

So what does this have to do with this thread? Just that like older technologies, Mandrake never really went away, kept alive in record collections, various re-issues, and the occasional airplay on things like Deep Tracks (my daughter heard one of our songs on there day before yesterday). We never re-formed and toured; once it was over, it was over. So instead of the band "dying" as it unwound over time with people dying off and/or getting older, we became frozen in time at the date we broke up. That's what people are hearing now. It's weird...like some time machine where the past is now part of the present.

What I'm told is that the people buying our albums aren't just oldsters looking for nostalgia, but kids who found out about us somehow and for whatever reason, relate to the music. In a way, that's really cool but there's also something strange about being reminded periodically that this piece of my life that I thought ended forty years ago never actually ended...

I, too, get warm feelings of nostalgia thinking about the times I spent spinning vinyl or working in some of the better studios I freelanced in, the low hum of the motors, the pleasing thunk of the mechanisms moving into play/record.

But while I may have a certain perverse affection for the many scars on my body, the imperfections in my vinyl media always produced anxiety -- and in the case when it was I who had induced them, painful regret. It took a long time before I could hear the music through the noise when I was a kid in the 60s and got into hi fi and recording, years. (And there is certainly a life-lesson there, no question. When I finally relaxed and gave up, I was able to actually enjoy my stereo.)

And I was horrified by the first CD player I heard, a very early and tremendously expensive (a Sony, about 2 grand in then-dollars if I recall correctly -- and it sounded like {censored}.)

But when the industry started getting itself together, I started hearing CDs and CD players that sounded good. I was still committed to vinyl but then one day I went out and spent premium money on a new ambient record on Eno's own EG label. It was a new, sealed LP but when I put it on the trusty Dual, the pops and grit was louder than the music. And, while the ambient music 'showed off' the noise of the crappy vinyl more than some of the other new and equally noisy records I'd made, it just summed up the whole losing proposition. For me, that was pretty much the end.

I'll say this: I'm listening to WMA subscription streams over the internet, as I write this -- a format guaranteed to send shudders up the spines of the self-appointed audiophiles before they've heard a note -- it's Gram Parsons and Emmylou -- and I gotta tell you -- I have no trouble hearing the aching soul of this music. No scratches pops or techno-nostalgia required.