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The Audio world's going to hell...

A

agent420

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Sep 6, 2001
Messages
1,388
In a musician's forum we were discussing how it seems that most new gear is more flash and less substance. I was doing some research and discovered that that the very first digital reverb device, the EMT 250 created in 1975, is almost considered the ultimate reverb. More info here. You'd think in 30+ years we'd have that in a wristwatch already, but imo current gear costing several hundred dollars doesn't even match that.

Anyway, the inventor went on to become involved in the birth of Lexicon, a leader in the field to this day. Sadly, he apparently does not have much optimism for the future of audio devices. A little scary.
 
While I'll agree with you that gear has not improved much in the past years, the world of DSP-processed plug-ins has exploded, and mostly because of Pro Tools. In this day and age of the more common project/home studios, RTAS/TDM plug-ins can sound as good as any piece of digital rack gear, and if not, then an AudioSuite variant surely would. It's not as if this is any real consideration, anyway, as most any professional studio album hits Pro Tools at some point in its life cycle, even if it's only bounced from 2" for the sake of convenience (and to save wearing out those glorious Studers), and I've never witnessed anyone shooting a Pro Tools track out to a piece of digital gear, unless it's a nice Waves MaxxBass unit or something.

Hell, take one of the most prime examples: the Access Indigo, an analog modelling synth renowned for its meatyness and phatness. Its exact equal is the Indigo TDM plug-in. The same exact DSPs performing the same work, yielding the exact same sound, with less noise!

The world of analog devices, of course, is still alive and kicking, and that's where the real magic of the studio happens. The plate reverb and echo chambers are dying out, but they are still used on occasion, even though a good plug-in can very closely approximate their sonic character. Hell, we've even been accurately recreating physical environments in DSP for a while now, so we can fake having tracked in the Sydney Opera Hall, if we really wanted to.
 
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